


Himiko War

by liese



Category: Bakemonogatari
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Growing Up, Supernatural Elements, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-25 00:58:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 41,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12024732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liese/pseuds/liese
Summary: This is the story of a Girl, a God, and a Warrior; of monsters and war, the one that is fought in the shade of the heart. And The tragedy that befalls Himiko is but the beginning of the tale.





	1. Prologue

No one, not even the ghosts, greeted me when I returned home. The silence slithered like a snake amidst the abandoned fields, sometimes it hissed in the form of a door, or a roof, that creaked. My tentative steps soon rushed to that place that had become my second home, but the closer I got, the more my legs trembled. My breath became short, my heart on the brink of bursting: I felt haunted by this emptiness that came into being like a monster, and again I was the child that was brought here after being rescued. I understood it before seeing it. No one inhabited the shrine by the lake, its bared womb quiet, too quiet. She was gone. Shishirui Seishirō was gone. 

  
It was gone, even the scent of rain.  
She took it all away.

  
I have been travelling in the attempt to grasp the two mirroring sides of the world, I have been on a journey to understand the human heart and its aberrant reality, but only then I learnt I had yet to face the most dreadful of apparitions: abandonment, and absence. Abandonment was something I already experienced, yet again it plunged and sunk inside my chest. My wound will not be soothed like that first time, though, when I found shelter in her golden embrace, a memory that sweet once lulled my heart, and now bedevilled it as mercilessly. She – She was the god of this place. I am sure you have heard of her, and this might be a pointless tale. A story that will survive, that will outlive me, and the eerie silence that dwelt the houses. But among these ruins, I want to remember.

  
I haven’t witnessed her birth, but I was told the lake birthed her, and with her came the rain that quenched the earth’s thirst and the mouths of people that became dry with prayers. Where the lake once was towered her temple, and among her people she lived, and the land flourished in those villages she protected. Where I come from, however, some people did not believe –– they refused the goddess’ favour, and her gracious help. I believed, though, when those glad tidings reached my ear, and I wonder to this day if it is because I had faith that I could be saved. Yes, a calamity befall my village. A mysterious calamity. On that day I was not spared loss, but I was spared death –– or worse, something which is not even death. On that day, my entire fate was shaped. A fate that began among the wrecks of my house, and lead me to the wrecks of my home.

  
I haven’t witnessed her birth, but I stand before the aftermath of her end.


	2. 001

I felt as though I breathed for the first time, my lungs filled with air, searing against my chest. I was struck with the panic we all must carry within ourselves since we came into this world –– however I was not reborn, I was already fifteen years old, and it was not a womb, but a tomb of fire and ashes the one from which I must have somehow crawled. I inhaled with greed ––– too much greed: I coughed just as violently, crouching on my stomach, a hand (whose hand?) patting firmly my back. “I told you – she lives.” I wanted to say it was enough, however I swallowed both my voice and my cough with a gulp the very moment I could see her: because hers was an unspeakable kind of beauty, I will not waste words in the poor attempt to describe it. She was ethereal. She was of gold. “Do I need remind you you were the one who worried she wouldn't make it?” The second voice belonged to a man, I immediately recognised him as a warrior for his attire; he wielded a longsword dug into the ground, and a sheathed short sword by his side. “Mmh – did I?”  
Their quarrelling voices echoed in my head and stung my temples like needles. “Mh... Hey...” my mouth was so dried out, my muttering was just as coarse. They started to talk between themselves, as if I was not there.  
“...”  
I was too timid and confused to step between their argument, so I stepped back when I successfully stood on my own legs. I retreated with reluctant steps, stumbling on the ground, faltering among my whirling memories. Everything dangerously swayed, yet I didn't halt, I dragged and dragged my feet, I dragged and dragged my body that suddenly ached, my body that trembled before I could even remember.  
Perhaps it was the scent, or the silence that dampened the air. Perhaps it was the darkness, those long shadows that crawled and gnawed at my ankles. The moon was a silver, paper-thin grin, and my heart drummed, it rang –– danger ––– as a single bead of sweat rolled down my chin and neck. I breathed, and the crowns of trees swelled; at each heartbeat, the dark winced; and suddenly, I knew ––  
“Where are you going?”  
I wanted to return home.  
My steps soon rushed down that familiar path, and, at last, they halted.  
It was the sound of mauled flesh, the noise of bones grinding against teeth.  
On that day, with my eyes wide and my mouth agape, I learnt what lurks in the shade cast by the human heart. Fear, contempt, vengeance –– they take the shapes of monsters, and they are real. My memories of that moment are quite blurry, but I remember that sword plunging in the ghost’s heart, and its dying cry as though it was torn apart.

A cry that howled in my dreams and turned into my own scream, when I woke.

This time I was wrapped in blankets, the room engulfed in dim twilight. I could not understand what time it was, my head hurt and I wondered how long I’ve been deep in slumber. “Where did you think you were going?” I turned my head and I saw her, clad in a silk vestment loosely tied around her hips. The same feeling from that night crept down my spine and made me shiver, it pinned me to my place with reverent terror: I was before something not of this world, something other. “Don’t look so dumbfounded. We barely made it in time.” The god spoken of in rumours. I was too shocked to speak back then, yet she continued to talk for a while, she informed me about what happened. She sat on the floor next to me, and I finally understood with clarity I lost everything. To this day I still find comfort in her voice devoid of pity, and I clung to it as if it was the hem of my mother’s robe. Only in the end, when she fell silent, I broke into tears; I think her fingers almost caressed my hair, but I didn’t give it too much thought amidst my sobs. Everything she did was leaving me alone with my sorrow.

I didn’t utter a word for the following days. At that time I couldn’t know that what happened to my village was just the beginning: in short, we had been visited by a hungry ghost. As for the cause, neither the goddess nor the man who served her, Shishirui Seishirō, were certain, but I was told he was investigating the matter. He was a warrior as I thought, not one who fought men, but spirits and monsters. Unexpectedly, this goddess with golden hair and golden eyes personally looked after me, although on her third day she started to demand me to speak. She didn’t like talking to a wall, she said. Truthfully, everything she told me didn’t require my answers: she decided I would have attended to the shrine, that I would be a guardian of her temple, helping her in her duties. In other words, she probably wanted me to become a miko, although I probably wasn’t fit for the role, nor did I have the knowledge, or the education for it. She seemed not to care, however. She did whatever she wanted, and before I knew it, I was taken under her wing. I quickly learnt she was as fickle as the weather she controlled: at times she thundered like a summer storm, at times her touch was soft like the timid kiss of the sun in winter. And she called me often – Himiko here, Himiko there – but only now I understand she probably tried to distract me from my grim thoughts. Eventually I thawed, or so I thought.  
“Now you ought to be careful.”  
I could feel drops of her blood sliding long my skin –– she was treating my body where the flames bit, leaving behind burnt meat. As you can probably imagine, I was immediately healed where the red trail reached.  
“What does it mean?”  
And as you can probably imagine, I was dreadfully intimidated.  
“These two worlds, the world of humans and the world of oddities, share the same spaces: we walk down the same roads, we inhabit the same houses, we roam your same countries. Yet they rarely ever meet, even if they need to be witnessed. Once it happens, you will not be able to not see it.”  
I shrunk in my shoulders, wrapping my arms around my knees. I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to see it ever again. But she continued, unfazed.  
“Oddities are born from the aberrations of the human heart, they are born from lore, and legends. Nonetheless, this is something I want you to understand: you need not be afraid.”  
I finally lifted my gaze, and the smile I saw still makes me feel brave today.  
“After all, Seishirou and I will teach you how to protect yourself.”

What she meant with it, I was not certain. I accepted, with helpless reluctance, the events that hit me like a tsunami wave, I let it shake me violently right and left. This disposition of mine seemed to sincerely irk my heavenly host, whom I knew judged my mournful passivity with that expression that, when deep in thought, turned into something similar to a scowl. Her lips would purse into a thin line, her features would transfigure, livid with genuine, unspoken anger. At times I felt she couldn’t stand looking at me, and it hurt me: I always behaved with the respect and gratitude I owed her, but something boiled in my depths whenever she would toss at me one of those glances, as though she thought unbearable my fatigued gestures, the sadness I knew borrowed my cheeks and circled my eyes with sick colours when I could not sleep. Thus, tense days followed my tender, almost idyllic awakening, until one evening I broke under the weight of her judgemental gaze and at once burst with rage – Shishirui-dono (whom she called Seishirou, playfully, or maybe spitefully, at times lovingly) was the witness of my pale, yet violent outburst.

He treated her with adoring, unconditional respect, but amidst their serious, intense talks (talks of monsters, talks of villages, people, tales), I always heard them laugh. If a distance existed between them, they filled it with their equally boisterous laughter, to the point they did not look like a goddess and the man who served her, but like good friends. She called him however she wanted, she linked her arm with his during the evening strolls, unconcerned with both etiquette and common sense. Sometimes even I forgot their roles, and I often tried to decipher those glances of his when she was not looking at him. There was something beautiful between them which I could not understand. In any event it was not so rare for him to be around, therefore he must have been realising how the air at the shrine became every day thicker, as if heavy with rain and thunder, although this time the storm was not brought by a miracle. But above all, it was predictable. I had been at the shrine for roughly three weeks, and when she said ‘help’, she more precisely meant ‘training’. She wanted me to learn, from both her and the skilled specialist, how to deal with monsters which she started to call _kaii_. Admittedly I had yet to recover, I was not collaborative, and while Shishirui-dono showed at least some understanding, she would grow irritated. Was a god supposed to act like that?

On the day I mentioned Shishirui-dono came as usual to visit, I was asked to prepare tea, but I was demanded to stay with them, too. That in itself was a rarity: we were rarely together, the three of us, I did not belong to that strange entity made of the two of them. I prepared and brought the tea, but I was made to sit and she poured it herself in three ceramic cups, one of which sat on the round table before me, white steam whirling mid-air. They were strangely quiet, and I thought I was going to be crushed by that silence. What was going on, what happened? My gaze bounced back and forth between them, but I was not deigned of a single glance.  
“Did you think I was not serious, when I told you that once you cross path with an oddity, you will keep stumbling upon them?” I was so confused by her sudden question, I clearly felt my eyes widen and my eyebrows arch, I could sense it on my flesh, my dumbfounded, or perhaps just dumb, expression. I didn’t answer – I did not know what to answer, but it seemed she mistook it for a war cry, my silence. “Oh if you wish to go through life with that stupid expression fixed on your face like a sad mask, you are free to do so. But I warn you: this is not how you will survive, not for too long.” I turned into stone, perhaps I even ceased to breathe, but my heart pounded inside my chest. “Take your time to mourn, but forget not to do what’s for your sake.” Shishirui-dono’s reconciling words did not help my already frail state. Even now I wonder if a demon hadn’t taken possession of me in that moment – in that moment when I slammed my hands against the table, and the teacups trembled (mine fell, and like I did, it shattered). “God?” The word rolled off my tongue, heavier than I thought. “How are you different from any monster? What do you think you could understand about me?” In the grip of my madness, I only caught a glimpse of her expression that changed because she soon disappeared from my sight, not even my voice felt like my own, nor my fists that clenched, or my body that quivered. Leave me alone.

Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. I started to repeat it.

Then, it happened: she slapped me.

I left soon after, but I didn’t hear her voice or the sounds of her footfalls.

I need to leave, I told myself choking on my own breath.

I need to leave. I need to leave. I need to leave. I need to leave. I need to leave. I need to leave. I need to leave. I need to leave. I need to leave. I need to leave. I need to leave.

I ran through the fields but I didn’t see them, nor was I reached by the voices of people who knew me and called for me. Eventually I stopped, and it looked like I didn’t run too far – when my steps slowed down, till my march came to a halt, Shishirui-dono had already caught up with me. I don’t remember what he told me first, actually I didn’t listen to it. I locked myself inside my anger – though today I know, I locked myself inside my fear. Without realising it myself, I had been letting myself go: I woke up every day as if that was my obligation. Because I was saved. No, because I was spared. Finally I looked around me – the thriving fields, the houses, the mountains that drew the profile of the sky – and I realised my unhappiness. I realised my body grew frail, I could follow the trace of blood vessels beneath my skin. I haven’t been hungry, admittedly. I was letting myself wither away, slowly but inevitably. My stomach, my heart, everything had been emptied, nothing inside me but the ghost of grief: it moved my hands, clutched and stretched my fingers. How sudden, how strange. I felt like I was the ghost instead, and I had crept inside this lump of flesh, among these innards, for the first time. “She is worried for you.” Only then I was reminded of his presence. _She is worried._ I had quietly surrendered before her eyes. I had been letting myself die before her eyes. And that was something she could not accept. She cannot accept defeat – no, that was not it. She cannot accept I will not stand and struggle after this defeat.

He told me that, when they brought me here, she looked after me day and night. She took care of me. He told me of her sorrow, of her hatred towards her own helplessness – but if she could save me, if only I could be saved, only then her heart could have rested. My death was to her more detestable than my weakness. I still remember those words, his voice severe: “She wouldn’t forgive herself.” So long as she lived – for an entire eternity, she wouldn’t forgive herself.  
I murmured something even I couldn’t understand or even hear, however I was not asked to repeat it. We returned, he walked a couple of steps ahead. I didn’t see her for the rest of the day, enshrined as she was in the depths of her sacred home. Shishirui-dono left, too. I took care of the mess I left behind, picking what was left of my cup from the ground, cleaning the tea that was spilled. I looked for something to eat, I made myself rice; I must have hit my right hand harder than the left, because my wrist almost hurt when I held the chopsticks. A couple of pregnant women came to visit, I was sorry I had to tell them to return later. Pregnant women. I instinctively thought of my mother.

She appeared again when the sun already plunged beyond horizon, and looking at her, at those eyelids half-closed that made her look still dreamy, I couldn’t help but ask it. “Were you sleeping?”  
She nodded absent-mindedly. “I was taking a nap.”  
So that was how she worried for me. Napping. Shishirui-dono said she looked after me day and night. Ah, I wonder… has she been sleeping at all, after I awoke?  
“Did you calm down?”  
This time I was the one who nodded her head. Then, she spoke again, austere. I remembered I called her a monster, and in that moment I truly felt ashamed.  
“I won’t allow you to die. I will not let you satisfy your death wish. I am giving you the chance to make this pain useful, but if you want to die, if you truly want to die, then leave. This is not a place where you can let yourself rot.”  
Needless to say, I did not leave.  
Silence wedged between us again: she wanted me to give her an answer, to speak, to scream, to shatter like a cup of tea, let my insides be spilled and then pick up those pieces with their sharp edges, and bring myself back together.

“My father was a smith,” those words slipped from my mouth before I could even think, before I could even chase those thoughts, as if they have always been there, brimming inside of me, “he was capable of forging swords as beautiful as the ones Shishirui-dono wields. He was reserved, his affection was shy. My mother served the Daimyo’s family – you probably know them –, she taught me everything I know today. They tried to give me a brother, but failed. I liked venturing to the feet of the mountains since I was a child, where there was an ancient shrine...” and I talked, and talked, and talked, for minutes, for hours, I could have talked for days. I told her of the people I knew, of the friends I met. I told her of those places in minute detail, and she never stopped this unbridled, impetuous flow of words. She stared at me and listened, even though the account of my life was far from interesting. I told her of our god, whom I visited every day, prayed to every day, how, as I heard of her miracles, our god’s silence angered me – saddened me.

My insides were being spilled.

Sometimes she would make me a question, I answered, then moved on before she consented. I named them one after the other, all the things I missed. The heavens had turned black and moonless when I finished.  
“Have you ever lost someone you loved?” I forgot who, what was sitting beside me, I forgot of my impudence. But she nodded her head, and then answered. “I did.”  
“Have you ever lost everything?” She nodded again, a sorrow I couldn’t name tinged her face so beautifully, I had to hold my breath. “I did.”  
I was soon sent to sleep, and I remember that night clearly because it was calm and dreamless. The first after long, endless weeks. No one mentioned what happened the day before, I attended to my duties, she to hers. Those pregnant women returned, she blessed them and assured them their children would born healthy and strong. It rained, that day. It was the first time I witnessed it – how she called forth the clouds, how they gathered and made the sky lead grey, how the rain then fell, and with its sound covered everything. Although it was not the first time, some people still cried: a miracle, a miracle, a miracle! Even I was awestruck and speechless. I stood there, letting the rain wash it all away: I could feel my pain that rolled down my cheeks, it stung my eyes, it tasted of salt on my lips. I could see her, arms wide open, turning and turning around, her clothing that swished, and her hair like a golden wave.

She joined me with a dance in this sacred ceremony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Being this story set when Kiss-Shot arrived in Japan, I thought it wouldn't be necessary to use Old English for her dialogue; because she learnt Japanese at that time, it will obviously not sound weird or quirky to others the way it does in the main canon timeline.


	3. 002

The hardships that awaited me along my path these last ten years pale in comparison to those excruciating days. It was not just my strength that I needed to get back; I needed to recover my will. In spite of my change of heart, things didn’t suddenly become easier – if anything life became harder once I faced my wounded and weak self. It was as though looking inside a distorted mirror. Suiten told me I had to make this pain useful. However she did not mean I should wield vengeance like a dagger, nor that I had to turn this grief -- this sorrow -- into anger. She seemed to know it better than anyone else, as if she remade herself from blood and ashes over and over again. Even if I listened to everything she said as though I was given some holy teaching, in the back of my mind I had but confused, jumbled thoughts. She was the god of the lake, the waters to which several people prayed, and yet she always spoke as one who was not spared death, loss, pain. Did she suffer because the people who worshipped the lake suffered, too? Did she suffer for those beliefs that were born and then died on her shores? She never told me, and I probably never understood. I am human, after all. Often I wondered if we could understand each other at all.

Suiten, on the contrary, didn’t appear to nurture the same worries, and my mission became her own as well. Actually, I thought she was making a more special effort than I was, starting from the little things: she was not what you would call a morning person, or, well – a morning god. Usually she woke when the morning turned to afternoon, and she would do so with the face of someone who was forced to. I am sure, if neither I nor anyone else came looking for her, she would rise in the evening, and again fall in slumber when the sun timidly peeks. However, it became a habit for hers to wake before noon. After the early cleaning and errands, she would take me for a stroll, through the fields just the two of us or through the village. The most vivid image of those moments is the sight of her squinting and dragging her feet sheltered by the shade of an umbrella. Really, she hated it, but she endured it with impressive perseverance, even though she would sometimes complain how the too bright sun could set her on fire. She had a gossamer skin that indeed looked translucent in daylight, but in truth I always thought she was exaggerating – sometimes she was overly dramatic.

Those were the times in which she would talk about her world – but needless to say, our “lessons” were often interrupted. She would be in the middle of explaining to me the supernatural and its phenomena, of talking about the _weird things_ going on around here, when someone would stop by and talk to her. I am not sure what you would expect it to look like – usually people go visit the gods at their shrines, and even though she did receive visits, it wasn’t rare for her to walk like that among people and chat about the most trivial matters. Most of the times she was asked to bless the fields with her rainy gift, even more often she was simply offered the fruits of hard work, miracles, and fatigue. She clearly enjoyed it, even when she was grumpy and annoyed a few seconds before. And she was quite voracious, too, as though she hadn’t tasted a fruit or a vegetable in so long, she had thus forgotten their taste. I am not exaggerating: you could see her enthusiasm clear as day in her face, which earned her an even more earnest love by people, who in turn thought they received great luck, and that the day would favour them among all. Every single thing I heard back in my village turned out to be true, even if I was a lone, privileged spectator of her life – more than Shishirui-dono himself, who was the closest to her, yet did not get to see her from dawn till dusk.

What was I saying?  
Our walks. And talks.

Despite her trying to introduce me to this world of hers, to explain it, to teach me, she was not a particularly good teacher. She would just talk about whatever she wanted regardless of the topics we had discussed beforehand. Perhaps luckily, she was a woman of practice through and through – I guess there are events and realities our words cannot quite express, or grasp. Admittedly, it was hard to guess whether she was impelled to abruptly end her lectures by my confused – and it is embarrassing to say –, distracted expression, or if she grew tired of explaining with words when she could show it to me. To me, to these very eyes of mine that, witnessed an aberration, could no longer unsee the phantasms in the fabric of _this_ reality. Ah, I can now understand my naiveté: there is not _this_ reality and _that_ reality. If I must be honest – and I have to, I want to – these thoughts hold me captive to this day: despite all the things I learnt to see, I shut my eyelids close, comforted by the darkness. I could not see it then, and I do not want to see it now, not yet.

It’s too early to remember: for now I shall recollect fonder memories of the first time I assisted her. To be fair, I was but a bystander.

“This is a quite easy task, otherwise I would have asked Seishirou to come.”  
Well, _thank you_.  
We walked well past the village’s outskirts, following a road that unfolded along the side of the hill.  
“This sounds like the kind of work not even Shishirui-dono would do.”  
She chuckled. “Indeed.”  
“So that’s true!”  
I have been blunt but she needed not be this honest about it, even though of course I can understand it: who would toss a fifteen years old, inexperienced miko-or-whatever-I-was into the nest of an oddity?  
“And stop calling him Shishirui-dono.” She sighed with dismay, hanging her head. “It confuses me.”  
“With all due respect, you are the one behaving overly intimate.”  
“It’s ironic, isn’t it? Don’t you think that man’s fate was written in his name.”  
“Did you really try to change the subject?” and if that was the case, then my path was engraved in my name like a mark, or perhaps a scar, “And if that were true, then who am I supposed to become?”  
That dazed look told me she didn’t catch the reference. Yet she nodded – at what, why? “Names are essential for supernatural creatures, as I told you. If you name it, you bind it. If you name it, you name its nature, too. However it’s not that different for humans.”  
She totally didn’t answer me! I realise I must look quite the irreverent brat, but I pressured her into answering me again. “Given where I am today, it’s probably true. I doubt I will become some shaman, but it looks like I am bound to this other world of yours.”  
She smiled and nodded again.  
I am giving up.  
“How do you write Shishirui-dono’s name?”  
“Seishirou’s name?”  
_Seriously_. “… Aye, Seishirou’s name.”  
“Uhm, his name is involved with the kanji of life and death, which is quite fitting for someone who works in the field. Besides, whereas Yumewatari brings oddities back to life, Kokorowatari kills them – even if one could argue whether oddities are alive or dead to begin with.” It was vague but I could somewhat understand what she meant. “Look, we've arrived.”  
Before us was the forlorn profile of a house. I thought it looked like that because it appeared abandoned, but Suiten quickly corrected my misconception: there was actually a last resident who occupied this place. No one came to greet us, however, and for a while we simply stood before the entrance, waiting.

I must have been starting at the tips of my feet for a quite long time, because when something hit my head – a round pebble, I saw it on the ground – I was so startled I let out a gasp. For a moment I thought it was her doing (I don’t have such a low opinion of her, but she would be capable of it nonetheless), when I followed the direction of her golden gaze: there, sitting on top of the tree branches, a bag full of small rocks sitting besides it, was the figure of a kid. His hair cut short, the colour of a thick night. As soon as I turned to look at it, he slapped his knee, and he snorted, as amused as ever, as if the sight of my face roused an untamed laughter within him. And, in fact, he burst.  
“This is your lesson for today,” She had the shadow of a sneer upon her lips: was she laughing at me, too?! “Do not get lost in thought while working.”  
“Right, right!”  
“Aren’t you rude, little one?”  
During their exchange I picked the stone from the ground, inspecting it: yes, I was both bewildered and offended. How did such a small kid climb on top of a tree, anyway? I was racking my brains when he jumped down, unafraid, and approached us with small but quick steps. I was not certain whether I was supposed to feel even more surprised now. “It took you so long to come, Suiten,” he stared at me as he spoke, he stared with a sarcastic look, “I started to wonder, what must I do to draw someone’s attention? Hadn’t you come today, I would have resorted to more than mere mischievous deeds. Eheh.”  
“Were you waiting for us?”  
“For _her_.”  
Stop making me feel useless.  
“I guess your plan worked.”  
Her expression became stern, suddenly: what was it that was now clear to her? “Complaints travelled to reach my ear,” she continued, and she turned with a rustle of clothes, walking towards the entrance and expecting us to follow, “Causing a commotion is yet another way for a child to draw attention, after all.”  
Before she could make another step, I tugged her sleeve. “Is this… your jurisdiction, Suiten-sama?”  
“What are you talking about now? You really are dense sometimes.”

I decided to shut up and follow her in silence. When we entered, the whole house creaked beneath our feet, a cracking wail that resounded at each step. Suiten and the boy proceeded wordlessly in front of me, until they took a turn and stepped inside a room whose function was unclear to me, its ceilings and walls and mats worn by time and years of abandonment. We sat on the floor as it were, but the child stood, swaying on his feet. Only then he turned shy, hesitant to talk. His black gaze darted among the remnants of this room, shifting between objects threadbare and those _we couldn’t see_ ; he glanced around, as though everything was the same still, as it was in his memories. I grew impatient, curious, and my impatience and my curiosity made me bite my lower lip. His movements made me swing back and forth on my knees, too.  
“So? You may speak.” It was Suiten who broke the silence, she didn’t let that slight annoyance boil inside of her, “You worked so hard, and now that I am here you will not speak?”  
“Besides, couldn’t he have come to us instead?”  
She glared at me, I obviously asked a dumb question. “It won’t leave this place. It can’t.”

Because the one living there was not human, nor was it made of flesh: it was a ghost. “It is not the ghost of a child who passed away here, though. It just _looks like_ a child.” Just as their nature was deceiving, the appearance of monsters was as misleading for the gullible ones – like me. “It is not a malevolent spirit. In truth ‘tis said among you folks that it brings fortune to its household.”  
No one lived there any longer, she said; but this spirit is stubborn, she continued, as if condemning it for being unable to let go of its lost family. “Can you now grasp the situation? Did you think I came here to take care of some difficult child?”  
Well – surely she knew how to make you feel embarrassed.  
“This spirit started to act quite mischievous – and who could blame it? It must feel bored, and lonely… and sad. Though this is not an excuse.”  
So they can feel bored, lonely, and sad.  
Some bear an anguished heart. She carried a woe-ridden heart.  
“Haven’t I told you?” she asked. Names are binding. Places are binding.

After a long silence, the spirit agreed with a melancholic cant of his head. “Maybe I could leave, once – but I don’t want to leave anymore.  
I don’t want to cause mischief.  
I don’t want to bring fortune to another family.  
The last member of my family died years ago.  
And their ghosts did not return here.”  
The more he spoke the harder it was to look at him as a creature that belonged to a different world. His grief was familiar to me. I knew it. I understood it -- the same grief had planted its root inside of me. And I reminded myself: we always meet monsters for a reason. Monsters have a reason to exist they cannot speak of, just like humans: maybe we are not that different. Maybe, sometimes, our hearts are not different at all.

And I understood his wordless plea.

 

Because nothing is left here –  
Because no one is left here –

 

“I understand.”  
I averted my gaze, worried she might look at me.  
“I will eat you.”  
I did not know it until that moment, but she was capable of eating other creatures like her. When I first heard it, however, I looked at her in disbelief: what did it mean she will eat him? And how did he know it? Perhaps they have an innate knowledge of their hierarchy? I did not get it.  
“Thank you. My existence has been fulfilled already.”  
Before I knew it, I was angry.  
Enraged.  
She must have sensed it because she pinned me to my place with a glare.  
I was resentful.  
I resented her for her mercilessness.  
She could have eaten me, too.  
Such ugly feelings I nurtured in silence, such ugly feelings I tucked in the folds of my heart.

She said she was going to eat him, but if I must describe it, I would say she sipped his spiritual energy out of him: she sank her teeth, I’m not sure how, I do not think he was made of bone or flesh. Well there is no point in trying to understand it: the boy slowly faded, as if he never existed, as if he never was there, his feet and his legs, his torso and his arms, his neck, his head. I did not look at his face.

She gobbled him up (did he toss at me another mocking look?).  
He died (did he laugh at me because he could see them reflected on my face, ugly and twisted, those feelings of his?).  
He was offered mercy (I was not).

Wherever he went, at least he was no longer tied to this lonely house, to these lonely rooms inhabited by nothing but time, and a ghost that time could not touch, or devour. I was sad, and bitter.  
“It was just a minor spirit, but we should not underestimate the current state of the spiritual world.”  
“So you didn’t do it for him, you did it because of this imbalance you always speak of.” I was sadder, and even more bitter.  
“I told him, I understood it. You understood it too and now you think I wronged you, but before you start complaining like a brat, let me tell you this: unlike our sly ghost, you did not fulfil your purpose.” Dying is too easy, She said.  
“And you?”  
“What?”  
My lower lip almost numb, I struggled to speak. “Did you fulfil your reason for existing?” “No, of course.” She said it with such confidence that I couldn’t possibly find the strength to talk back.

When we left, the house was really empty. I also felt empty, again. A hollow corpse, or the hollow grave of a ghost. That was not exactly what I had in mind when talking of exterminating monsters – certainly, sometimes it must be different, I told myself. More dangerous, more violent. But what I had witnessed was akin to looking for a cure to a disease – a disease of the heart, of the soul. Sometimes the cure is death, or rather, a non existence. Cessation of being. Annihilation. If that was not my cure, I thought, then it must be a journey, a path, the fate carried in my own name.

While returning home, my anger no longer raged like a storm. Walking behind her all I could see was the golden wave of her hair that throbbed with the dying colours of dusk. If I am going to stretch my hand and touch it, she will slip from the grasp of my fingers like ethereal thin air, or so I felt.  
I did not try to reach her, and maybe I truly was afraid of the fact I could not be certain she was not going to fade, or melt into gold. In doubt, I joined my hands together behind my back. I was well-aware that it was going to happen again, that she was going to bring me with her, with Shishirui-dono, too, that there was no point in asking it out loud: _I wanted to go again_. My body shivered in spite of the warm winds, shook from the inside by a new resolve: I wanted to understand what truly happened to me. And then, I wanted to move on. Therefore I had no other path to tread except the one she was tracing walking ahead; that, I decided, was going to be my direction. I did not want to be forever bound to that place; I did not want to die there, I did not want to become a ghost.

I hastened my stride, and I caught up with her.


	4. 003

Don't worry; the actual plot will soon unfold.

Indeed, I saw more haunted places and hunted hearts afterwards. Looking after other people’s monsters momentarily made me forget about my own. However, despite being told we were on the brink of war, nowhere I could find or witness a single battle – there were but people fighting on their own. Fighting alone. Perhaps war was ravaging those places where I was not allowed, during those times in which I was left behind, with no one but myself and my childish disdain. I am not sure why I wanted to witness it, and to be quite honest I had no idea how to picture it: invisible armies descending the hills, bloodless battles, men swinging their swords against the winds? I might have been an idiot at times, but even then I knew that wouldn’t be what this war would look like. Neither Suiten nor Shishirui-dono ever cared to clarify it to me. And by the way, after much intense confabulation, I had not one, but two big mentors. You know, I thought Suiten was the tallest person – being – I ever saw, but Shishirui-dono was even taller than she was. Scary. Just being in his mere presence sent shivers down my spine. Anyway, I assume Suiten simply convinced (forced) him to _tell me things_ , as she put it. And things he told me, and unless she was still soundly sleeping (yes – _Suiten-sama_ eventually returned to her routine) she’d sit by me to listen, too. I was at unease, but no one was more flustered than Shishirui-dono. I guess the reason was it felt like he was lecturing the both of us, but there was clearly a conflict of power in that – not that Suiten ever seemed to concern herself with such worldly matters, but Shishirui-dono was not that easy-going. I doubt he could be, even if I could only imagine his upbringing.   
I guess their relationship was not so straightforward, after all. He might be her sword, but to her eyes he was no weapon. Because she valued his opinion so – because she valued him so –, she could sit and listen like that without a care in the world. I don’t know if Shishirui-dono could see that much, or if he could even conceive such a thought to begin with.

Really, what an awkward duo.

Sitting around tea served with sweets, whether in the quiet chambers of her shrine or in the shade of a tree, we eventually ventured in the deep, summer heat. Since the season fully hit our villages, Suiten was less and less inclined to show herself during the day, which meant that more often than not I was left to deal with Shishirui-dono on my own. Honestly, that put more pressure on me than dealing with Suiten herself.  
“I’m sorry you have to do this.” I found myself mumbling those words without really thinking as I poured tea in our cups. That didn’t bring back just pleasant memories, but I pushed on the back of my mind those moments alongside my shame.  
“Well, it is safer this way – Suiten-sama was not wrong in asking me to do it.”  
Safer, uh – the way he said it I couldn’t tell if it was safer for myself or others. Either way. “Thank you very much for your time.”  
What a crazy request of her, though. I doubted he was sharing the centuries of secrets of his household, nonetheless he had been demanded to impart to a nobody like me some precious knowledge. I tried to appease my mind by telling myself that, had he been so against it, he would have never conceded so much to Suiten.  
Shrug it off, shrug it off.  
“May I ask you something?” He nodded his head, as I looked beyond his shoulder. He wasn’t in armour, and yet – “Why did you bring kokorowatari and yumewatari?”

Rattle rattle.  
_Rattle rattle_.

In that instant a door behind me was weakly opened, and crawling as though on the verge of her last breath was no other than Suiten herself, “We have to be somewhere, later – you too, Himiko,” barely composed, barely – dressed, even?!  
I caught a glimpse of Shishirui-dono who seemed to have turned into a statue, the cup he was holding perfectly still a breath away from his lips, before I rushed to the demon who still tried to make her way outside – can’t you see what you’ve done?! You took all of a man’s admiration, all of his adoration, and you killed him!  
“Could you please get properly dressed before, uh, dragging your body outside?”  
“I’m dressed… I did my best.”  
“Lame!” I said it out loud, ops.  
“The sun… the sun is going to kill me,” apparently she didn’t hear me, but I really wanted her to go back whence she came, “my previous shrine… it was much more effective in sheltering me from the touch of my mortal enemy.”  
“That… that didn’t look like one.” I never mentioned it because it was way too bizarre to bring up, but her shrine had changed considerably through time. When I had arrived, it looked nothing like the kind of buildings I was familiar with, it was weird and uncomfortable. But apparently she was capable of creating matter at her own will, reason for which remodelling it didn’t pose much of an issue. “I get it, I get it, I’ll help you.”  
“Yes, that’s what miko are for anyway, aren’t they? But listen, I’ve been thinking about something.”  
“Cannot this wait?”  
“No, I might forget again. I was thinking about your name.”  
“We talked about it in the previous chapter already.”  
“I hadn’t thought about it yet. The name Himiko, it’s no good. Now that you’re my miko, you should change it.”  
“Change it? Into what?”  
“Sumiko is much better.”  
“I refuse.” I – I could see what she was doing there. She hated the sun so much she couldn’t stand the fact it was in my name? And she could even make it appropriate for me, as the miko of a lake god, by replacing it with the character for water?  
“I put a lot of thought into it, brat.”  
I appreciated the effort, but no.  
I bowed profusely to Shishirui-dono, who hadn’t broken out from the spell that set him in stone.

...The things I got used to.

When Suiten was ready to show herself, he had finished his tea and mine had turned cold. She had suddenly asked me to comb her hair, too, which took a long time – as usual.  
“As I was saying, we have to be somewhere later. And you shall come with us, Sumiko.”  
“I’ll let you know, Suiten-sama, I never accepted to change my name. It’s Himiko.” But I see, that was the reason why Shishirui-dono had brought along his katana. “Where do we have to go?”  
“Your home village.” Aah, I was so glad he could still tal-- wait, what? My thoughts took a sudden turn, as my mood dangerously started to roll downhill. “Do you think you can do it?”  
“Rather –” she inspected the sweets on the table before snatching one and eating it in one gulp. For a moment I thought she might have been half-asleep still, and that her sentence would forever be left unfinished, but as she closely looked at the wagashi again, finally, she asked: “– do you want to?”  
I don’t think she was being sensitive, but that was a good question still.  
I was aware that, sometime, eventually, sooner or later – I knew that one day I needed to return to that place. Home. At the crossroad with my own demons. That was more than a fact, that was inevitable. And yet I couldn’t help but ask, “Why?”, why does it have to be now, when I was not read yet? Why did it have to happen right then, when I thought I could move on (perhaps – after all – without ever looking back)?  
“What happened in your village might help us unveil what is going on,” explained Shishirui-dono, “it is vital we return there.”  
“Why now, though? And why do I have to come?”  
“Don’t you think you should?” Suiten looked at me with a puzzled, yet vaguely sibylline expression.

As I said – she wasn’t being sensitive. I was going to go, whether I wanted it or not.

And so, once the sun finally started its descent, my journey back home began.

A place not far away, set apart in the mountain’s forest. I thought it silly to leave at such a time, but I doubted Suiten would have accepted to go in the morning, and so –  
The two of them walked ahead of me, sometimes in silence, sometimes chatting. They looked like usual, they looked the same they did every time we set off to ascertain some odd phenomenon, and yet I couldn’t shake off the feeling there was something suspicious about it. Why did they decide to go check again only now? Why did I have to be with them, why was it so necessary? Those thoughts grew like a tide, and as though caught in those streams, I could not escape it.

The cries of the cicadas swallowed the village we left behind our backs, smaller and smaller as calmly but steadily we walked: drown it was, eventually, in that summer song. Despite the day having turned to the late afternoon, the air was still fairly hot – the sensation of hair stuck on the nape of my neck was somewhat displeasing. I had let it grow but I came to regret it a little bit. Those two, however, seemed quite unconcerned, and for an instant I thought my doubts were unfounded after all. “Are you afraid that oddity might still be lurking somewhere? Is that why you need the swords?” I had but a blurry, confused memory of it, and yet that was enough to fill me anxiety.  
“No, that one is gone. Kokorowatari is infallible.” Shishirui-dono seemed quite confident about it, so much so that I had no choice but believe him. “Nevertheless it does not mean we should be reckless.”  
Suiten nodded as if she knew anything about being cautious. You know, I have to take back what I said before: she would, after all, toss a miko-or-whatever-I-was in the wild without a second thought. Those were never extremely risky situations, perhaps, but she could be ruthless nonetheless.  
“I guess you’re looking for something, after all –” Maybe even they did not know what this something was supposed to look like, and that’s why they were being so secretive about it.  
Grown-ups don’t always know everything.  
Indeed, just how ungrateful could I be? They saved me and suspicion was how I repaid them? How was I supposed to stitch my wounds if at these times my trust faltered like that? That feeling of half guilt half shame clutched my heart, and that was a familiar grip. I had many faults, but this one was the one I hated the most: how frail, frail my faith could be. The tide grew into waves that rocked me back and forth – feelings, memories that tried to surface, but were trapped beneath a lid. As though, for some reason, my own heart was beyond reach. Walking down that familiar path sheltered by the rich crown of the trees, I knew there were things that I had to remember. But neither Suiten nor Shishirui-dono were hiding them from me – I was hiding them. I was hiding them from myself.

And there, where things were once burnt, devoured in flame, was a lid of green and ash and white – as if nothing ever happened. The greenery claimed that place with its tragedy, but I could guess which house on the both sides of the road was which – I still knew were was mine, on the far edge of this path. My sweat suddenly turned cold, despite the last lights of the day seeped through the foliage, washing over us. Honestly, there didn’t seem to be anything else there, it was just the three of us.  
“Feel free to go wherever you wish, so long as you don’t suddenly run away in a frenzy.” Well, Suiten didn’t trust me much either. “Also, here.” She tossed me something that I caught with both my hands before it actually hit my face: it was a string of dark green beads, didn’t look like jade or anything I knew.  
“What is this?”  
“It’s a charm, but if you find anything just come to us.”  
Come on, don’t you think my character would gain from possessing some cool weapon? A knife, a katana, a naginata? What will be of me if I only possess something so lame-looking?  
Not like I’d actually entrust myself with similar objects.  
But – how can I become cool like the girls from the canon installments at this rate?  
Anyway (not that I knew anything about that, just rumours).  
I knew where I wanted to go first of all. And after that. Above all, after that.

What was left of my house were mere shreds. Unless you knew there was a house there, you’d have never guessed. When this happened, it was just father and I living there – mother had passed away with the sibling I never had in the end. I had no other relatives I was aware of, neither in this village nor anywhere else. I survived alongside some tools I could dig from the ground: a plate, a broken cup, some knife my father must have planned to sell. I already said my father was a swordsmith, and that’s exactly why I know I wouldn’t entrust myself with those objects. Whenever I held one I swelled with fear and thrill. “I’m going to grow up, eventually.” I picked it nonetheless, it was still in a good condition despite being exposed to the whims of the weather. Father was a skilled artisan, after all.  
I paid only a short visit – there wasn’t much to see there. And in spite of my reluctance, in spite of my disquietude – there wasn’t much more to remember, either.  
I ventured deeper in the forest, the path I used to walk every day had almost disappeared, but that, that was a road that both my feet and my heart still remembered. A trail to my safe place, to my haven – because that was house of a god, you might call it my heaven. It wasn’t a shrine on the same scale of Suiten’s own, and with the passing of time fewer and fewer people came to visit this place. Once word reached of the miracle you all know of, people deserted this god altogether. I still came here, I still came to the very end.  
A yama no kami.  
I had no idea what it looked like, but mother used to say the god of the mountain possessed the appearance of a beautiful woman – after seeing Suiten, that was somehow easier to believe, even if gods can take all kind of forms and shapes. At the very least, the god’s house had been spared, even though it still suffered from neglect after all this time.

I’m sorry I didn’t return sooner – but it is as I said, isn’t it?  
I am feeble. Weak.  
Weak like this twinkling of bells. 

That was all I could hear. Not the rustling of leaves, not my breath, not my heartbeat.

“Good afternoon.”  
The twilight had started to gnaw at my shadow, and it cast an ominous light on the man who greeted me. There were tiny, round bells hanging from the hem of his haori, and the takuhatsugasa he was wearing prevented me from clearly seeing his face. As far as I knew, he was a human – reason for which I couldn’t tell whether this was one of the circumstances in which I was supposed to go back to Shishirui-dono and Suiten. He didn’t seem to be carrying weapons, but there was something grim about the aura surrounding him.  
“Good afternoon –?” Well, I might as well leave, I thought. Why would anyone pass by such a place was beyond my understanding, and for that very reason, inevitably dubious. However, the moment I took the first step, “What a surprise,” he said, as if to agree with me. “I did not expect to meet anyone in this forgotten temple.”  
“Neither did I…” At the very least, I used to live here, I’ve never seen this guy before.  
“This is the first time I come here, you see. I have interest in these places.”  
What was that? I started to feel like he might actually be reading my mind, after all – a specialist? They were still humans, no matter how skilled that shouldn’t be part of their repertoire, should it?  
“Oh, yeah? Why is that?”  
“This is my area of expertise, you see.” He made a pause, as if searching for the right word, or maybe he just wanted to show me that smug grin of his. Who knows. “Gods.”  
“Gods?”  
“Gods.”  
So he was a specialist, after all. “Mmh – isn’t it hard sometimes to tell apart the gods from the swarm of oddities?”  
He laughed, and I was sure he was mocking me. “Just as expected of Shishirui-san. He is a thorough teacher.” Uh? Did he know Shishirui-dono? “Or was it the God of the lake who told you? You see, I’m quite interested in that one, too.”  
That was some irksome speech quirk. I did not see it and I was not sure I wanted to see it either. “Say girl, what’s your name?”  
I pondered on it for an instant, “Sumiko.”  
“That doesn’t sound quite right, does it?”  
Of course it doesn’t, but I know better than getting friendly with some shady man. I’m not that much of an idiot (I’ve been repeating this a lot, I’m aware). “Well, if you’re here to meet with Shishirui-dono, I think he’s up to something in the village.” More precisely, what was left of it.  
“I didn’t come to meet him – I don’t think he’d be that happy to see me either.” The bells rang, announcing his steps, and by then the dark had swallowed the shades, the night falling upon us like a silky, star-studded drape. I was not sure what the beads-charm were for, but for one I believed it was not working – the fact that knife was hanging to my belt was a much more reassuring feeling. By that time I already knew of the barrier around us, even though I couldn’t conceive why a grown man wanted to pick a fight with a girl to begin with – it’s fine if you’ve been underestimating me. I never planned to go in details explaining what I was taught and what I learnt. Some of those things were supposed to be kept secret, too. However, a fool I might have been, but not so much of a fool as I was in the beginning (at this point I’m just trying to convince myself).  
“I guess you don’t give off the vibe of a people person.”  
“You don’t give off the vibe of a person person either.” The wordplay was somewhat lost on me. I didn’t catch the joke or what he was referring to. But unconcerned, he continued, “what happened to your village is related to this god’s fate. It must have been pitiful and sick way before that one suddenly sprouted from the lake, but that event must have delivered an almost fatal blow. Are you entitled to be worshipped, if you can’t even perform a miracle?” That scornful chuckle, again. “Well, I guess to the very end it tried to live for the reason it existed, anyway. Did you come here often?”  
“Mh... probably...” I was the only one coming here – to the very end, as he said.  
At last, even if enveloped in the darkness, he came to close that I could see his eyes: pitch-black, and brimming with disgust. And that disgust, fierce and overwhelming, was clearly, undoubtedly directed at me. “I’m surprised,” he said in a flat tone, so much devoid of warmth it chilled my blood, “Your sin –”

I didn’t get to hear what he said afterwards.  
I mean, I can now imagine what it was.  
Something like –  
“Your sin is much greater than I thought.”  
And back then – yes, I would have agreed with him.

He had moved a lot faster than my eyes could see, too fast for me to react, to start to conceive that I needed to act. Not as much of a fool, but still a quite big fool I was. I’m not sure I can say much in my defense, I was trying to act cool when there were one too many things I had failed to notice. For instance, those little bells of his were not innocuous bells. I wasn’t sure what they did, I only knew they were part of the trick. My mind was not yet in a hypnosis, but slowly, slowly enough for me to not notice until it was too late, my body had already surrendered to a trance. I couldn’t have been faster, and even if I did, I would have failed in my attempt to react regardless.

I might be making half excuses, after all.

As anticlimactic as it was, I lost consciousness the moment he touched my head. Everything turned black, and I was gone. I was surprised when I woke up a few hours later, in the dead of night – I really thought that was the end of me, that that blackness that sweetly embraced me could be nothing but death.

It reminded me of mother –  
Peaceful, comfortable.

But then I was slowly pulled out back on this cold, wet soil, pulled back inside this cold skin. “You finally came back to,” Suiten’s voice greeted me, just like back then. “Hmpf, that was creepy to watch. You’ve been crying this whole time but you wouldn’t wake up.”  
“W-what?!” I abruptly sat and touched my cheeks and the corners of my eyes, and I could distinctly tell apart the taste of salt on my lips, too. “There was… some weird guy.”  
“Oh, yes, we solved the issue. We are at fault for this misunderstanding.” She was sitting on a stone, doused in darkness and silver moonlight, her gaze cast somewhere beyond the swelling crowns of the trees. She looked weirdly melancholic… weirdly unreachable, despite being so close. “What did he tell you?”  
My memento was still there, and so were the beads, wrapped around my wrist. Really, what a disappointment. “Weird things – does Shishirui-dono know him?”  
“He does – well, do not overthink it. If he values his own life, he will give heed to my warning.”  
_Appear where my eyes can see you, breathe where my ears can hear you, and I will pluck your heart out of your chest and banquet with your miserable corpse._ Apparently, those were Suiten’s literal words. Threatening and theatrical like usual –– truthful as usual. Never had she caused harm to people around her, no –– yet, if only you could have stood close to her, you would understand. You would sense it, that something raw, that something dreadful and violent. That world-wrecking power. Her eyes glimmered with it, and I feared it. Only the fool will not fear it. Was that specialist a fool or not, it was too early to tell.  
“I wish I had seen this. Where is Shishirui-dono?”  
“He’ll be back soon. Coming here proved to be fruitful – and truthfully, it was not a lie that this place might be important in this story.”  
“You mean the fact this god died?”  
“What makes you think it did?”  
How to put it – it felt empty.  
“I see.”

The night breeze slowly woke me up from my numbness, and as I did, as thoughts poured in again to fill the blankness, I remembered a few other things.  
Confused words.  
Nonsense words.  
I didn’t tell Suiten or Shishirui-dono once he came back and we started our journey back.  
_I can’t believe you kept this thing alive._  
That’s what the man said.


	5. 004 - Interlude

I pushed those thoughts to some remote corner of my mind.   
I couldn't let them intrude any further.   
Not when I was starting to feel better.   
Not when I found a comfortable place.

After all, no one else mentioned the unfortunate encounter ever again; a memory buried in the summer heat. As soon as we returned, I became absorbed in much more trivial matters – in the midst of all the oddity hunting, somehow or others I found myself organising a festival. And as surprising as it might sound… I was the one who proposed it. With this little head of mine I found the perfect way to avert my eyes and my heart from things that could be troubling.  
“As a god in the flesh, a day should be established in which you’re celebrated,” I had proposed, very much convinced of it myself, “this is what I think as your miko.”  
“Now you’re suddenly fine with this?” Suiten was quite suspicious, as though I couldn’t have a sudden change of mind. She seemed to be quietly pondering about it, but I didn’t see a reason why she would decline.   
“I only needed time to get used to it.” That much was true, but I couldn’t blame her for failing to understand my humane struggles to get familiar with a completely different life style, a totally other world.

Even if, in all honesty –

When you spend so much time with someone, when you live under the same roof, there are things you can’t help but notice. I shrugged them off as more or less funny quirks, but sometimes Suiten really felt out of place. With each passing day, she blended in more and more, to the point that, sometimes, I forgot about it all – until she would say or do something to take me aback, to take me back to those days. And I mean, it wasn’t the fact she was learning Japanese, I didn’t quite expect such a – being to know a human language. What I’m trying to say is that she seemed odd in her being an oddity. Like she wasn’t that certain of what she was supposed to do.

Perhaps she might be able to understand me, after all.

“I am not foreign to this idea.” She returned to the main subject, lazily waving her fan, lying still in the twilight where the afternoon light could not reach. “Will you organise it?”   
“I guess so.” Looking at her I couldn’t resist, and finally, at long last, I asked. “Why is it that you hate the sun so much? Is it because you were living at the bottom of the lake, and you never got much light?”   
“That’s correct,” she was so quick at agreeing, it almost surprised me. “Besides, it was because of that obnoxious celestial orb that these people suffered so.”   
I guess that was an explanation I could be content with. “Well, then –“   
“I thought you’d be brooding over what happened – did you finally grow up?” She sounded exceptionally annoyed while saying something that should have been an achievement. I was not so dull to not understand where her snide remark was coming from, yet I pretended so.   
“What do you mean? People change, that’s what they do.” Not like I did, though.   
“That person – he only goes by Shinsho now, a previous onmyoji.” I was taken aback by the fact she suddenly shared more of what she came to know. I thought we silently agreed that was history. “Apparently, that’s how Seishirou got to know him, before he abandoned his duty for his… pastime.” He might have fallen from grace, but there were still many who respected him, she said, her voice brimming with contempt – the same he nurtured for those creatures we commonly call gods. “I only know what Seishirou told me, but it seems this man committed a grave mistake at some point. He blamed the gods for abandoning him rather than himself, and since then he has been on the war path for revenge. It is a lame story as much as it is stupid.”   
Even if he were to exorcise every one oddity believed to be a god, he couldn’t eradicate people’s beliefs in such beings. Eventually, they’d just spawn again: different perhaps, and yet still themselves. “A pointless cycle of revenge, uh – do you think he’s after you?”   
“Perhaps? I wouldn’t know.”   
She fell silent, and so did I. What was the meaning of those words of his, then? Could it be he wasn’t referring to me, but something else – the god of the mountain? Another god that failed to prevent doom from befalling its worshippers? It still did not explain why it was _me_ who was attacked for no apparent reason. He might have known about Suiten but I doubt he’d know about me. Argh, I could actually start to feel myself brooding over it after all! “Why, then?” I asked it out loud, and the sound of my words seemed to drown every other noise – the chirping and the clamouring in the distance, the rustling of the wind and the hammering of my heart. “Why would he come after _me_? Could a guy like that make such a mistake?”   
“He is a man with an obsession, you can’t expect to make sense of it.”   
“Well,” to be fair, I wanted to stop talking about that, “I doubt we’ll ever see him again, right?” _I shall tend to the festival._ And forget about my star-crossed nemesis.

_I shall tend to the festival, to that fated night –_   
The night I, at last, won one battle in my own war.   
But before that, I had to be defeated, inevitably.   
Crushed, mercilessly. Because, after all, I did meet him again.


	6. 005

I had almost no idea how to organise a festival or a party of any sort, I just had to go with the flow. For this reason I asked a fellow person who had no idea how to organise a festival or a party of any sort, that is, my friend (surprise!) to help me out with that. Fuyutsuki was one of the first people I befriended in this village, and somehow it seemed she could tolerate me. Believe it or not, there was a bunch of kids I was friends with – I guess, once the initial awe was overcome anyone could see I was an almost regular girl. Anyway, Fuyutsuki helped out, especially to keep me motivated through the whole ordeal, a disaster I brought upon myself despite everyone being so awkwardly enthusiastic about it. Needless to say, my friend was not the only I turned to; needless to say, the _actual_ execution of my idea was mostly made possible by the Shishirui clan. However –   
“A ceremony, uh?” Fuyutsuki looked all pensive, as if she was pouring all of her thought into it. “Well, of course you’d be asked about that.”   
“I have no idea what to do.” Suiten had looked at me with a vacuous look, before she smiled and proposed something I had never heard of. “Of all the things I’m learning, there isn’t a single one of them that will help me now.”   
“Try to list them?”   
I stopped walking, and counted on my fingers. “I have improved my reading and writing, I learnt hair combing, tea ceremony, dressing someone else, way too many folklore tales,” _punching monsters_ , but I didn’t say that, despite it being based on a true story deserving its own spin-off, and that I simply could not fit here, “a bit of sword-wielding, general fighting skills –“ I was almost out of fingers, but Fuyutsuki interrupted me.   
“Whoa, you’ve been keeping yourself busy learning anything except how to be a miko.” That hurt. “Well, I guess some of those things might be necessary for the job.” _I can understand your despair, but you can do it_ , she said patting my back.

I was going to be overwhelmed by the soul-crushing weight of everyone’s expectations, I knew that much. And yet, I moved on. An act that always seemed so impossible, an act so _absurd_.

A summer storm interrupted our daily errands, forcing the two of us to take shelter beneath the thick branches of a tree, the rain drumming heavily against its leaves. My chest was full of its scent, and as I stood next to Fuyutsuki I could feel at ease. At long last.   
“Do you think it was Suiten-sama?”   
“No, I don’t think so.” There was hardly any difference between the two events, but let’s be honest: she was more likely still asleep.   
“Anyway don’t overthink it, Hi-chan. You’ll figure this out.”   
“Do you think so? I’ll probably wing it as usual.”   
She shook her head, vigorously so, to strongly disagree with me. “Maybe you don’t see it yourself, but you’re quite amazing, Hi-chan. I am not the only one who thinks so.” The easiness I had felt was violently replaced with an embarrassment that set my whole body aflame – and she had more preposterous things to say. “I don’t think Suiten-sama would have taken you in if she hadn’t seen something in you, no? Before you, she didn’t take in any servant or miko of sorts, even though there was – and is – plenty of noble, well-taught young ladies who would fit the role. Shishirui-dono accepted you, too. Don’t you think there’s a reason for that?”   
As much as I didn’t want to think about it, my mind returned to those words that guy – Shinsho – spoke. “What if that’s a wrong reason, though?”   
For a while there was no answer but the rain’s steady murmur. The sunshine had already cut a slit in the grey mantle of clouds.   
“You’re just so untrustworthy.” She finally said with a soft chuckle, “Do you trust Suiten-sama?”   
I thought about it, my gaze cast skyward. It would have been hard – no, impossible, to give a single name to my feelings.   
Gratitude.   
Respect.   
Reverence.   
Indeed, trust.   
But that couldn’t possibly be enough to describe it. Suiten was not just a god to me. She was not just the one who saved me. In her own clumsy, unpredictable way she stood by me. I hadn’t been so unfortunate to not know or realise it was love what I felt – love not for a god, but for a friend. A mother.   
“I do.” I replied at last, realising how silly I have been. “I do.”   
Saying it out loud made me feel anew.   
I let that feeling settle inside of me, like the last rain gently tapping the ground.   
“Thank you, Fuyu-chan. You’re quite amazing, too.”   
“I know, I know.” She made a big, dumb-looking grin. She was definitely better than me at taking compliments.

We parted ways afterwards.

That talk really lifted my spirit, and I returned to the shrine full of confidence at lunch time. When I looked for Suiten, weirdly enough she wasn’t there; that she woke up that early and dragged herself in the morning sun sounded not surprising, just downright insane. Unless –   
“Unless she made it rain after all, just for some brief relief?!”   
That… that seemed very possible. I’d have to ask her later, so that I may complete a list of pointless things to do with godly powers.   
“Well, it means I can just focus on that ceremony and come up with something.”   
I really didn’t want to disappoint everyone. Whether that reason to allow me here was right or wrong it wouldn’t matter so long as I proved to be up to the task. Yes, I was _that_ determined.

… For a little while.

Sitting with my legs crossed on the wooden floor, the more I thought about it the more my mind seemed to drift backward, and forward and then backward again, like the waves of the ocean. There were some unpleasant memories there, right beneath the surface, and it was off they’d suddenly return to me. I realised I never thought much about my mother and father because it was as though I was blocked from reaching those recollections – recollections that were now prodding me. The _unpleasant_ ones. No such a thing as a perfect family exists, that much I was aware of, and for a long time family was just my father and I. At times, I felt it was just me, as the loss of mother caused my father to lose himself, too. Being a witness to that had been painful. That’s why I called the mountain god’s shrine my haven: that was the place I’d run to, where I’d seek comfort. No matter what I did (be it taking care of our house or trying to learn my father’s craft) it was never enough… those were the kind of memories that emerged, bubbling up. I felt quite silly, both for my unbridled excitement and for how short-lived my motivation and enthusiasm could be. I sighed, so loudly that it echoed through the shrine.

I knew I was supposed to show I had finally become capable of fighting the discomfort, but I was won over instead. I still worked and put together some ideas. I still tried, really, but it was as though everything had a bittersweet aftertaste, especially the food I ate. I guess you don’t overcome your problems overnight, uh? I put to use what I knew: I searched for the cause. Despite the fact that there were many apparent reasons for my distress, I knew there was something deeper I couldn’t quite set my eyes on yet. Things I struggled to think of. Things I didn’t want to think of. There was a lot I had buried, tucked away in my heart, just in order to get to this point. As Suiten would put it, I stopped brooding over things, but it was not because I had the courage to come to terms with them. I just averted my eyes, waiting for a better time – and such a time couldn’t possibly exist. That was why she had listened to my proposal with little care for concealing her annoyance. She must have known from the start that this idea was not for her, to celebrate her, it was but a scheme to spare myself a little longer, a tribute to my childishness, to my refusal to grow up. Fuyutsuki was wrong about me. And, perhaps, Suiten had started to think she was wrong, too, and Shishirui-dono would have to concede his concerns were not too far off the mark.  
I screamed.  
My voice exploded, from the bottom of my lungs, and I scared away a group of birds.  
I felt better for a second, maybe.

I didn’t see Suiten for the rest of the afternoon, and I started to wonder where she might have run off to. I just hoped nothing had happened (not like I could have been of much help). Restless, I wanted to leave myself – go for a walk, maybe find a place where I could scream more?   
Just kidding.   
I was genuinely worried, like there was a point in worrying for a god, and eventually it overcame my frustration. I thought about the ceremony enough already, and I needed Suiten to hear about my suggestions first anyway. She was going to listen to all of them, and then tell me to decide what I think is best. After that I will humbly ask Shishirui-dono to help, and he will destroy every idea of mine and send me back. Just like that, an endless cycle of despair. I might actually end up choosing whatever I like more, or worse, wing it.   
I might have needed a place where I could scream more in peace.   
Again, just kidding.

It felt like an eternity, but I was left alone with my demons just for a few more hours. I had never been so happy to see Suiten again, who had announced herself with a sigh much longer and louder than mine, and avoiding all pleasantries she just plopped herself on some cushions.   
“Where have you been, Suiten-sama?” She seemed in a foul mood, so I showed off the most pleasing tone I could master. I didn’t feel like accidentally angering her, honestly. “I was starting to feel worried.”   
“… nowhere special.”   
Oh. I couldn’t tell if she really simply went somewhere unimportant on her own, or if she didn’t want to talk about it. “Was it you who made it rain this morning?”   
“Of course it was me. I could have never flown otherwise.”   
“You can fly?!”   
She clicked her tongue, realising she shouldn’t have let it slip. “Why is it so surprising? I can make it rain, flying seems a small feat in comparison.”   
“Do you grow wings?!”   
“As I said –“   
“I kinda want to see it now.”   
“Please forget about it.”   
Sadly I never saw her fly. I could never convince her to show me (or bring me, but she clearly wouldn’t have complied with my wish).   
“I am sure you will be happy to hear I made progress with the festival’s ceremony though.”   
“Oh? Let’s hear about it, then.”   
“I want to ask something else first.”   
“Mmh – well, that’s fine.”   
I’m sure you know what I wanted to ask.   
“Don’t you think – there are people more qualified for this duty?”

What she did was roll her eyes. And snort. Like she couldn’t believe her own ears. “Yesterday you were saying you got used to it, but now you changed your mind? How many times exactly does it need to happen?”   
My insecurity irked her, I knew that much. But I needed to be told it: I needed her to say it out loud, that that was my place. “I am just afraid I am going to disappoint you.” I had to swallow my shame to pronounce those words, and unsurprisingly it hurt – not as much as speaking them out loud.   
“So what if there’s someone more qualified than you? I have no interest in it.”   
_Because I have my own good reasons_. Reasons, just like Fuyutsuki told me. Reasons I had to trust. No, reasons I had to _believe in_. Reasons I wanted to know, reasons I yearned for, but wasn’t brave enough to ask for. I was only pitiful enough to need them.   
I decided it was time to go for that walk.   
“Kids of your age are so hard to deal with. But go: the moonlight is lovely tonight.”

And it really was.

Given how much she loved nighttime, perhaps I should have had the festival happen during a full moon night. Besides, the moon is connected to the element of water: it really made sense in my head. “I should have gone out the moment I thought about it...”   
I wandered aimlessly, as there was no place where I planned to head to. Since last time I never returned where my previous home once was, although I had promised myself that I would. I didn’t have to, but I needed to, and that need had become a yearning: what I wanted was closure, and solve what had to be solved. If there was anything I had to find, anything I had to look at with my own eyes, then I knew I was going to find it there. And leave it behind, at last.   
Grow up.   
The idea of it was somehow melancholic.   
There wasn’t much a difference between growing up and giving up, that must have been why. Give up the innocence, and the comfort of many illusions. Embracing the happiness of it – but the sorrow, too. Until that moment I had done nothing but remember fondly what I had lost, be it the shock, the trauma of all that happened; but slowly, ever so slowly I was opening my eyes to a woeful reality.   
And I – “have to accept it.”   
“It is about time.”

I barely held back a scream, that seriously scared me. Yet, not as much as it startled me seeing the person that voice belonged to – sitting with his back against a tree was the man who I should have never seen again.   
Shinsho.   
Previous omnyoji.   
Forsaken by the gods.   
And a man who didn’t fear defying one.   
“Why are you so surprised?” He calmly stood up, as though everything was normal about that situation, as though this was but a lucky second encounter. “I had no reason to heed to your god’s order. I must admit she had a quite murderous look in her eyes. Don’t you think she looks – feels quite irregular for a god?”   
I didn’t answer, but that was just because after the shock I could think of something: I wanted to know what this man knew. Or what he thought he knew. It became pretty clear that, for whatever twisted reason, _I_ was the target. That fact in itself was curious – no, strange. And the circumstances of our first meeting made me look at this series of events as fated.   
He snorted. “But why do I ask you? You clearly know nothing.”   
Yes, I would have liked to run away. Yes, that would have been the smart choice. No, I was not doused in some new, shiny courage, nor did I hone a determination of steel, but if something was being hidden from me, then I had to stop hiding myself.

He approached me, ominous presence and all. His smile was a humourless grin, and there was but a chiming of bells that followed his steps, which came to a halt where the moonlight cast a bleak light on his features, on the bottomless pits that were those eyes. Thinking back about it, I still feel uncomfortable about the long, long silence that followed, and how painful it had been to keep eye contact. I was told who he was, and who he had become, reason for which I really didn’t feel like being overly carefree. It was just a sensation, but I thought I barely survived my mistakes the first time.   
“How to put it,” I accidentally let out a gasp when he finally spoke, that was how I tense I was, “What you are doing – rather, not doing – is incredibly stupid, and yet it was the right decision.”   
“I’m not sure being told I did the right thing out of idiocy is a compliment.”   
“You see, it wasn’t. Do you really need to be told everything?”   
“I was sarcastic.” Come on, it is not that hard to read the undertone. “Did you come this far, defying the ire of a god, just to insult a young girl?”   
He cackled, but there was nothing reassuring in that mild display of amusement – if anything, I felt a cold pang in my stomach. “How calm, you grow up fast.”   
If only everyone could stop joking about it. “Are you after Suiten-sama? I really cannot understand what’s your problem with me.”   
“Of course, the likes of you could never understand.” There was no warmth in his voice, and I found that frightening – and how could I not be frightened of a man who willingly disobeyed a god? “Indeed, the god of the lake is the one I was interested in. You know when they say a story is too good to be true? That’s just what it looked to me – and then, you see, I found out about you. And an unlikely story became just impossible.”   
_Unacceptable_ , even.   
“It still doesn’t explain the grudge of an adult against a kid.” Yeah, if I had to look back, and think who was the last person who nurtured unreasonable, gut-deep ill-will towards me – that person was probably my father.   
“What do you know of the events that brought to your village’s demise?”   
“I don’t see the point in answering when you make it sound like you’re about to introduce a plot twist...” I wasn’t being irreverent for no reason. I wanted him to finally spit it out.   
“I see. That’s why you didn’t seek her out, there’s something you want to hear from me.” _Just as I thought_ , or so I think he murmured to himself. I was trying to act spiteful and collected, but my heart hammered against my chest. I was certain, those eyes of his must have pierced through my feigned confidence already, and he could see it clearly, in the plain moonlight, that I feared: I feared what he had to say, what Suiten hadn’t said, what I couldn’t tell myself. In fact he sighed, as if he was about to lecture a hopeless child.

“Haven’t you ever asked yourself why you’re the only one who survived the incident? You see, that makes you look like the perpetrator.” When he chuckled, again, he appeared genuinely amused. I, for one, wasn’t enjoying myself. “Your Suiten-sama was not the first god who saved you. It was not a coincidence we first met in that abandoned shrine.”   
“You’re not making any sense –“   
“Then I’ll spell it out in a way even you can understand it.” For each step he made towards me I instinctively retreated, not caring much about keeping up a calm appearance anymore. At that point I was not just scared to hear more, I was scared for my life. “You were worshipping a minor deity in your village. A god that almost slipped in the oblivion – a god half-forgotten is as good as half-dead already. And as a final act, it chose to help you over everyone else. I don’t know what’s the deal with you – do you have an affinity? You see, I don’t really care. But the act of relinquishing the many over the single – that act is what I find despicable.”   
_You will agree that’s not what a god ought to do, or to be._ I sincerely did not know what I agreed or did not agree with when I could barely comprehend his rant.   
“That just sounds personal given your history – admitting all of this is true, could it be you’re just jealous?” My throat was so dry, I do not know how I managed to mumble those words… a complete, utterly dumb sentence. The Shinsho guy looked more than enough angry already, I surely didn’t need to rile him up.   
“Oh I think your story is far more tragic than mine.”   
But his answer chilled me to the bone, a spell that turned me into stone.   
“Because the god chose you, it made you into a monster –“   
I thought of all the times I went to that shrine.   
I went to the shrine to pray to the god.   
I went to the shrine to pray –   
_help me._   
“What happened to me… it just turned me into a god-forsaken human.”   
“You’re lying.”   
That’s what I stammered, but one thing was for certain.   
What that man was implying was none other than the fact that the incident occurred _because of me._   
Or worse…   
_That I caused it._   
If that was the truth I have been unable to look at, I had to survive through this.   
Again.   
I had to survive to ask her.   
“You’re lying.” I repeated it.   
Again.   
And again.   
Until my murmuring became a shout –

And he leapt towards me. His arm extended, his fingers stretched in the act of reaching me – touching me. And I, I was still feeling heavy as stone, but an anger I did not know I nurtured reared its ugly head inside of me.

Something that I was hiding –   
something that was being hidden from me.   
Something that I was hiding from myself.

I jumped back before he could get a hold of me, taken aback and stumbling on my own steps, but I was quickly back on my feet – what do you think, I didn’t spend my whole time idling, running errands or watching over Suiten and her duties: I made a list of all the things I learnt just that same morning. Not like I deserved to be deemed some _onna bugeisha_ , still I could defend myself. As startling as it was to me, I realised that the seemingly nonsensical training with Suiten somehow bore fruit. I must have bewildered the man himself: he stood still and between his fingers was nothing but thin air, which was a good time to realise I couldn’t have a chance (yet) against a man bigger than me (although he was not as tall as Shishirui-dono); that his skills were those of a specialist whereas I was nothing but a mockery of a miko. In other words, I could not hope to overpower him.   
Remember that knife I picked out from the remnants of my house?   
I wish I could say I had been hiding it all along, like a ninja or something like that. Truth was I had lulled myself into a fake state of comfort, of course I wouldn’t bring that with me. I had really believed I wouldn’t have met him again, that Suiten successfully deterred him from looking for us. I didn’t blame her, she probably was as certain as I had been – and yet, despite Suiten having said so herself, neither of us counted in the most important detail.

His obsession.

The two of us were opposites that could never understand each other. Even to this day, I am unable to understand him. And I am sure he wouldn’t be able to understand me either.

I still had the choice to run away, but I doubted I had any chance at actually escaping. I didn’t have one from the beginning, so I couldn’t even blame myself for yet another bad life choice. I could, however, blame my carelessness. Of all the tricks up my sleeve I wasn’t confident in the success of a single one of them, but they were all I had.   
And so.

I was the one who went after him, running, silence all around us except for my war cry. My eyes were set on his figure, glued on him, and as he did not move, not a single muscle of his body, not a shadow of a grin on his face, I thought: he is waiting for the last moment to deflect me. What I didn’t think, though, was that he was waiting for the last moment to hit, and when I saw it coming it was – almost too late.   
Something really weird happened.   
I bent down right in time and I avoided his attack, and taking advantage of that split second of astonishment, I got a hold of his right arm and wrenched it behind his back. My body barely felt my own, and I couldn’t tell if it was because I had been beat (and beaten) many times before, or if that was a sense of survival, a desire of self-preservation.   
In any case, the magic didn’t last too long.   
The dissonance between my mind and my body marked my defeat.   
He quickly got a hold of himself and successfully released himself, and before I knew it I was the one trapped in his grip, his fingers wrapped around my neck, tightly but not enough to strangle me.   
“Why are you fighting back?”   
Just tightly enough to silence me.   
“You heard the truth, now stop wasting my time.”   
“ – Nonsense.” I gathered all my breath to yell that single word.   
“What happened that night – indeed, the disturbance in the spiritual world might have something to do with it, but you’re the one who _lit the fire_.”   
I told him again: _you’re lying, you’re lying, you’re lying_. I emptied my lungs of air, and I was left to gasp.   
And then, he said.   
“You’d nonetheless be a monster.”   
He said it.   
“This is what we call those who stain their hands with blood.”

His words pounded in my head.

And my hands were not stained with blood.

My face, my hair, my clothes, my body, my legs – I was soaked in it.

As he let go of me, a mere instant I had to revel in the sheer consternation that at last lit up his gaze. As a limb of his was violently shredded, in the corner of my eye gleamed a golden glint.

She had told him, she had promised him: I will kill you.

Lying in the dirt, sore and still breathless, I turned and I saw her. She, and her face red with blood, and there his arm, ripped, there at her feet, as the fingers seemed to spasm with a last, painful twitch.

I was scared of her.   
I was terrified.   
I was horrified.

It was a visceral, ancient terror – it twisted my guts and tied them in a knot. Yet I couldn’t look away – I couldn’t avert my eyes from her gruesome, violent beauty, from her red stained robe, from her eyes which glare I thought was enough to stop this man’s heartbeat. He was still growling and yet grovelling, crawling on his back at every step of hers. It must have roused within him, tremendously, this same feeling of mine. A question must have haunted his mind, looking at her smeared with his mortal blood, looming over him, inevitable like death: is this what gods truly look like?

Didn’t he say so?   
_She looks – feels – quite irregular for a god._

“D-on’t” I chocked on my words and my breath, dragging myself to her feet “d-don’t do it.”   
Oh no, I did not speak moved by feelings of mercy or forgiveness. I did not care about this man facing the fate he himself sought, golden-haired and monstrous. I did not care if he died, and if he did not, it could be me tomorrow.   
I was not begging for him; I was begging for myself.   
I did not want to see it. I did not want to see her doing it. Even if I shut my eyes closed and drowned the noises in my scream, even if I hid where I could not see it. I did not want her to do it.   
“I told him. He came knowing he would face my ire – and I keep my promises.” She did not look at me as she spoke: she was looking at him who was looking right back at her, with immense pain and without a choice. “Why,” she continued, and although all I saw was her hair’s faint glow, I knew she was honing her claws and her glare, “Why would you ask me to spare him?”   
“This is not what you’re supposed to do.” Tears stung the corners of my eyes, and that glow turned into a golden blur. “This is not what you’re supposed to be.”   
“You don’t know what I am supposed to be.”

It was true.   
Perhaps it was true, but –

“This is my duty,” I shouted the instant she raised her arm, the instant that man closed his eyes, tense and gritting his teeth, “I will be the one who defeats him.” I breathed in, deeply. “I will be the one who kills him.” When the time will come, when he will return to take this ugly existence of mine – “This is what I am supposed to do.” I really spoke without thinking. I rambled.   
But I couldn’t let her do it, and it was but a childish need: I couldn’t stand looking at someone I loved transforming into someone I did not know, again. That would hurt more than defeat, more than these bruises – my little, pathetic heart ached knowing I wouldn’t be able to forgive her. It throbbed, but it throbbed like an open, festering wound. “Let him go for today,” I knelt before her, my forehead touching the ground, “I beg you.”

I didn’t look up, but I clearly felt her eyes on me. I spent some time in that position – seconds, minutes. I swallowed the sobs and the tears, I barely breathed, I did not move. That was a valuable lesson: when dealing with certain gods, persevere.   
“Hmpf,” All I heard was the click of her tongue, and Shinsho’s moribund breathing. “Seishirou won’t like this.”   
I was still immobile, so much I could have turned into a rock. Honestly, I was not even sure if he would survive the blood loss, and above all the fright. Nonetheless she let him go.

“Stand up, you fool.” I didn’t let her repeat herself twice: I stood – out of fear. I stood on my feet and avoided looking at the onmyoji whose life I just swore to take. My step was uncertain and I felt dizzy, which made it arduous to keep up with her gait. My entire, blood-stained body trembled with a tremour that shook me from my bones to my guts, from my stomach to my heart. I felt cold, overwhelmed with that sickening smell.   
“At least remember to make an offering.” _An offering worth a man’s life_ – I couldn’t quite think of anything appropriate. Rather, it was quite impossible for me to think, gripped as I was by both terror and the violent delight of being, somehow, alive.   
I hesitated to follow her.   
But all I wanted was to leave Shinsho behind.   
Maybe he will die on his own.   
All I did was hopelessly chasing my own thoughts for a while, but eventually I could grasp one. I could blabber some nonsense of my own.   
“I offer you my life.”   
My life whose shape was now uncertain –   
My life and these hidden things inside of me –   
When she turned towards me, I only caught glimpse of a half surprised, half preoccupied look on her face as I bowed to her, “I will be a proper miko and I will devote myself to you.”   
Whatever expression she had, it had disappeared when I looked at her again: she seemed disappointed, and deeply so. “I thought you were already my miko.” “Not properly!” My rebuttal must have sounded comically angered, because she laughed, and she laughed clearly of me.   
“I see, this sounds more than _getting used to it_. I guess this is a worthy offering –“

It was both beautiful and terrible, looking at her blood red smile.

“I accept it.”   
And then she said, before I could even ask.   
“And I will answer – what I can.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess this is the turning point of this story -- I'm probably going to write roughly 5 more chapters after this.   
> If you'd like, I'd love to know your comments and thoughts about Himiko War thus far.


	7. 006

I might have embellished the ending to the previous chapter. That was, for sure, the essence of what happened – but I might have omitted a detail here and there. I was full of horror and terror, and the words I said I said them with my very bones trembling and my voice shaking. Clad in blood and the silver of the moonlight, I was seeing her under a new, eerie light. Honestly it was fear that prompted my words and forced me to take the first step towards home. I told myself, _the only reason she was capable of that was because he was an enemy and a threat_ , but I couldn’t quite convince myself. I guess – for the first time, I was seeing her for what she was, and I have to admit I thought it was something closer to a demon than a god. I doubted anyone ever saw it. I doubted Shishirui-dono knew it, either. After all, how to explain it to him seemed to be the only thing she was concerned with. She wouldn’t know what was most important to him, their friendship or his duty towards humans. The fact she was worried over something like that humanised and demonised her at the same time: to me, it suddenly looked as though a single man’s opinion was the only thing between her and committing a bloodbath. Had it been for her, perhaps the onmyouji would have died the same night he foolishly crossed her path.   
“I am certain he will understand the circumstances.”   
I didn’t really reply to that. Indeed, it would have been either me or him, so, maybe, I shouldn’t be so scared and harsh.  
… Especially when I said I’d be the one doing the killing – I’m the kind of person who rambles on and on when in a pinch. I wonder what made her believe I had that kind of resolve, if she believed me at all.  
“Do you… Do you think he’s dead?” I thought it unlikely he survived the wound or the fright, yet he didn’t seem the kind of man who would just let himself be killed like that either.  
“I don’t really care. Either way this is now your responsibility, isn’t it?”  
_Looked like she believed me._  
Since she didn’t question me, I kept the conversation between Shinsho and I for myself. After all, it was not Suiten he was after – I had to solve this on my own. Yes, that much was indeed my responsibility. 

Besides –  
“Don’t you want to know the reason why he came after me?”  
I couldn’t trust her.  
Her silence convinced me that there was something Suiten hid from me, and Shishirui-dono was complicit. That feeling of suspicion weighed on my chest as heavily as the smell of blood.  
“Did he say?”  
“What if he did?”  
She chuckled, so coldly it sent shivers down my spine, commenting how surprising it was that I could act so defiant while still shaking in my shoes.  
“If there’s something you’d like to ask – why don’t you go ahead and do it? I cannot answer a question that was never posed in the first place.”  
The blame was on me, then. Yet, despite being provoked, despite her encouragement to spit it out, I simply couldn’t reply to that.  
_Why am I monster?_  
Are you a monster?  
Then what is the difference between human and god?  
“So? Nothing to say?”  
I shook my head: no, I have nothing to say.

As soon as we returned I went straight to take a bath. I had to wash it – scratch it – all away. The tears, the sweat, the blood, the screams I could hear still, the images I could see behind my eyelids. When I stepped into it, the water was quick to become tainted in red, and the stench roused an unpleasant nausea from the pit of my stomach – it awoke the tremor that for a while settled still in my bones. I tried to focus on my conversation with Shinsho in hope to somehow make sense of it. The fact a nemesis rambles apparent nonsense is such a convenient literary escamotage, had he been clearer this story might ended much sooner (and he might have saved a limb on top of it). Of course, it wasn’t convenient for me at all, and the burden to untangle it all rested upon my shoulders (and I wasn’t sure they were strong enough for the task).

Anyway.

Having a mystery to solve, my shaking quietly died down.

Suiten was not the first god who saved me. The way he put it seemed to imply that was the reason why I survived the incident, but thus far I assumed I was alive because Suiten and Shishirui-dono found me on time. Could I be so wrong about the very basics? I thought about it thoroughly as thoroughly I washed my hair, but my mind couldn’t just wander past that night. Well, it’s not as though I couldn’t remember anything at all, but it felt as though a thread had been snapped, and the me before then didn’t quite feel like myself. As if I could only look at it as shadows cast on a paper wall, unable to see the real thing. The one thing I could say with certainty, however, was that the god Shinsho was referring to was the god of the mountain. There couldn’t be anything else. But that god never appeared in the flesh, like Suiten for example. _If_ a god was there, it hid well in its small shrine. I couldn’t think of anything out of the ordinary, either – not a single event that could be explained as the mysterious act of a supernatural being. Life in our village flowed quietly. At times, too quietly. The region by the lake was not the only one that suffered from the drought, inevitably it spread, like a disease. Even so, I can’t say the inhabitants of my village were so fervent to stick to a god seemingly deaf to their requests.  
I – had my own reasons for visiting that sacred place.  
It had nothing to do with poverty or hunger. I’m sure I must have thought I’d have rather starved than die by the hand of that despair of mine. At the thought, it felt the water had turned cold, so much so that I almost struggled to get out of it, and as soon as I did, trembling on my knees, I vomited to my heart’s content. Perhaps it is more accurate to say to my stomach’s content. Man, I wish I did it earlier, outside. This took an unexpectedly, even more disgusting turn, and I couldn’t say I was happy about it, but – it wasn’t exactly a delayed reaction to that gruesome show (well, surely that didn’t help). There were some things that returned to me, some didn’t, but the shock wave from that was, to me, far worse than seeing a limb being torn off. 

The reason why I diligently attended to that half-forgotten shrine was because I needed someone to talk to.  
Someone to ask help to.

It wasn’t so much that I forgot – I simply stopped looking at it altogether.

If I couldn’t erase it, I would pretend it wasn’t there.

Until I wasn’t ready.

There are plenty of oddities that mess with your memories, but I doubted it was my case. That was pure, simple avoidance. Denial.

Yet, it explained so little. 

Things had become sour after my mother’s death. That loss weighed on my father so, that after losing her love, I lost his, too. He would blame me because there was no one else to blame. Be it the loss of her, the loss of his clientele, the loss of his soberness. Eventually he convinced me it was my fault after all, even though I could not say how or why. Sensing something ugly, people started to avoid him, too. And thus I asked, and asked, and again asked the god to help me run from it. To magically fix it, solve it, because I didn’t know what to do about it. That being said, I cannot think of a single way in which I was helped. Thus, what the onmyouji meant was left unsolved. I couldn’t understand that much, let alone why I was a monster. Was I monster for having survived? For having escaped it at last? For thinking of but myself, rather than help my old man? Was a selfish, desperate request enough to make me a monster? I was starting to believe he might have been some crazy dude, but I just couldn’t shrug it off as such.  
“Will I have to ask Suiten, after all?”  
Despite the fact I was scared?  
Despite the fact I was an ungrateful, distrustful brat?  
She didn’t seem to be concerned at all about the fact that I saw what I saw, so perhaps I was overthinking it?  
“Whatever.”  
I cleaned the awful mess I left behind, and to my surprise I did feel better afterwards. I didn’t make too much progress, but I made a first, tiny step nevertheless. It wasn’t too far-fetched to assume that the whole situation was intertwined with the turmoil in the spiritual world, which meant that if I tagged along Suiten and Shishirui-dono long enough I might find out what Shinsho meant.  
I might find out what I still couldn’t look at. 

“Are you done already? Had I known I’d have made this a two baths shrine.”  
Jeez. She disappeared when we arrived home, but Suiten quickly returned to claim her spaces, ruining the mood and wrecking my train of thought.  
“Aye, aye –“ I hesitated as I waited to slide the door open for her. Would I be able to look at her? What would I tell her? What was she going to tell me? Would I be able to stand on my feet? Would I just run away in terror? Would I vomit again? Why did it have to be so awkward, and so on, and so on, I might have pondered on those questions forever.   
Unluckily she wasn’t so patient.  
She marched in before I could make up my mind about anything.  
“Hurry up.”  
“Dress up!”  
She walked in already naked, and I didn’t dress yet either, which made me shriek like the kid I was.  
“Do you bathe clothed? We’re both women, don’t be so embarrassed --” she looked at me a moment, and her lips curled in a _definitely_ devilish grin. “Well, almost.”  
“Don’t go judge my maiden body with that judgy look.”  
“I thought this was going to be a respectable story, but this scene belongs to a shonen manga.”  
“You lost me with this analogy.” Though I felt like I could almost grasp it.  
I put on something, but she just stood there. “The water is dirty.”  
“You didn’t give me the time!”  
“Anyway, I was thinking – did you already get your first menstruation?”  
“Why are we talking about this?! Who cares?!” _What would you know about it, even._  
“I was just saying, it might be you’re a late bloomer. I’ll marry you off as soon as that happens.”  
“Please don’t do that.” Nobody will accept to take care of this place after getting to know you, trust me. On a sadder note, I had never thought about it, but I was starting to feel extremely self conscious about my body.  
“Didn’t you notice? I have seen at least two young lads giving you those looks.”  
“… I didn’t notice, but I guess this restores my self-confidence? Or is this just gross?”  
“Of course you wouldn’t notice. Perhaps you’re interested in that friend of yours?”  
“If you mean Fuyutsuki, this is getting into weird territory – but no.”  
After that, we finally managed to prepare her bath. and eventually I got used to her full-bodied nakedness. As stupid as that conversation was, it made me wonder if she didn’t do on purpose – except she didn’t possess such sensitivities. I bet she just wanted to play me like a fool.  
Still, I relaxed.  
Like a fool.  
I cleared my throat. “I also saw someone giving you those looks.”  
“What’s surprising about that?”  
Her confidence soared to the roof, it might have pierced through it.  
Besides, everything was wrong about that.  
“Are you curious who I am referring to?”  
“You’re unbearable when you have that sneaky attitude.” She stepped into the water and for a while she seemed to have forgotten about me, until, at last, she added a curt _no_ to her answer.  
I see, it was a one-way teasing, and the silence reminded me how out of place was that banter. And as if reading my mind, Suiten spoke to me suddenly: “I couldn’t quite tell if you were horrified because of what happened to the specialist or if you were terrified of me.”  
I pondered on it shortly: such a straightforward statement demanded a straightforward reply, but I was afraid of the consequences, of admitting it out loud. I tried and took another step forward: stop being a coward. “Honestly, both of them. But mostly the latter.”  
“I see.”  
There was hardly any feeling in her flat answer, seemingly answering absent-mindedly as she bathed. She was giving me her back, so I wouldn’t know if any fleeted in her eyes (not that it often occurred). “However,” I said, feebly, and I tried to clear my voice, “there are other things I am more afraid of right now.”  
She turned to look at me with a puzzled look, clearly demanding me to elaborate.  
“How did I survive the calamity that befell my village?”  
And then she turned, again. “I thought you’d have never asked.”  
“The way you put it shortly after I woke up didn’t seem to require me questioning it.” _I simply trusted you_ , I said. I said it angrily. I felt it seeping through my words, in the nails digging my fists’ skin.  
“Can’t you ever take responsibility, or do you always have to blame someone else?”  
_Like my father always did._ “How can I blame myself for not being told the truth?”  
“Neither Seishirou nor I know the truth. You might think we have been leaving you in the dark, but we don’t know much more.” I learnt to tell when she was growing frustrated, and that was such a time. “And Seishirou’s reasons to not tell you the details of _how_ you survived persuaded me he was in the right –” She clicked her tongue and froze me with a glare, “– you should have asked that specialist, whatever you talked about it seemed he told you a lot about it. Perhaps it is easier for you to trust someone who attempted to kill you twice?”  
Suiten scoffed at me.  
Mockingly.  
Resentfully.  
“Don’t ever think that I did all of that out of sympathy. I didn’t save you three times because I have feelings I nurture for you especially – humans are all the same to me, and you’re correct in being afraid of me.”  
I’m not going to cry.  
_I’m not going to cry._  
I really hope I wasn’t crying.  
“Do you want the details? I’ll come right away, go wait in your room.”  
With that last line it felt like being scolded by my mother, except it was worse. 

I left as she ordered, unable to utter a response. The things she had just told me hurt me more than seeing her act like a demon, and I didn’t know what to make of them. Humans are all the same to her? That much I thought was a lie, one that perhaps she could keep telling herself – no, I wasn’t so conceited to think I was the special one, but I was certain Shishirui-dono was. I tried to cradle myself into the belief that she was merely outraged and hurled those words at me: if I had reasons to not trust her, I straight up couldn’t believe her now.  
Why purposely hurt me?  
I had the time to get dressed and brood over it as I waited for her. I was worried about what she was going to tell me, too. Reality is not always that likeable, and I hadn’t expected her to decide to answer my question right away. Then again, why wait any longer? What for?  
Exhaustion caught up with me. It got pretty late, and the whole evening had drained me. I dozed off several times and I must have fallen asleep on those thoughts eventually, as I remember having some awful dreams. Suiten woke me just as awfully. When she was finally ready and looked for me the room was dimly illuminated by the first lights, which meant it took her a few hours to finish her bath, and that I couldn’t rest nearly enough. Moreover I slept sitting on my knees and I hurt terribly when I regained consciousness; when I moved my neck it felt as though it could crack like a twig.  
“Hmpf, did you fall asleep?”  
Since she favoured night-time I doubted she could understand the state I was in. If anything, she looked invigorated.  
“You look awful.”  
I had no retort to that, and I didn’t need a mirror to confirm it: I _felt_ awful.  
“Do I get the day off?”  
“What’s your excuse? Foolishness?”  
I had no retort to that, again.  
“Anyway, to answer your question –“  
That was enough to shake awake my consciousness. She took a seat, or rather, she lay on the ground on her side, her chin resting on the palm of her hand. She was quick to make herself comfortable, as if she was going to talk about something trivial, when I thought that was of vital importance.  
To me, at the very least.  
“So –?”  
“An oddity was involved. Well, not a simple oddity, I guess. You were told people can be possessed by one, yes? That was the case.”  
Uh?  
What?  
“I think I’d remember if something like this had happened –“  
“Not necessarily,” she interrupted me, and she continued with a bored expression, “from the looks of it, and from what the oddity itself said, it is more accurate to say it took over your body. It makes sense you wouldn’t have any recollection of it.”  
“H-how did you talk to it?”  
“When we found you you ran somewhere like an idiot until you collapsed again. Then _it_ resurfaced for a short time, but long enough to mutter its dying words.”  
“Dying words –“  
“Well, it’s a figure of speech. Oddities don’t die in that sense, I guess.”  
“What did it say?”  
“Can’t recall.”  
That sounded like she didn’t feel like telling me, but I might have been reading too much into it.  
“And why was it dying?”  
It didn’t make sense, right? If it was something like a parasite, than having found a host should have granted its survival. Not that I felt great about being the host of such a creature.  
“I think it already started well before that. Honestly, you should know what oddity this was.”  
“How can I –“  
_Wait a moment._  
Suiten was right, I should have understood it right away. I mean, there was only one such candidate. A slowly disappearing oddity. A forgotten legend. A forsaken story.  
A god that saved me.  
“Do you get it?”  
“The god of the mountain.”  
The god whose shrine I visited every day.  
The god I asked help to every day.  
And that god – helped me.  
“Indeed – well, that was what it said,” Suiten nodded, and finally sat properly, “Seishirou wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Not like it is all that uncommon, but I can’t deny there was something suspicious about it. So we agreed to keep an eye on you and see what would happen. After all,” crossing her legs, she leaned towards me and looked at me, gazed right into my eyes, but I only dared look at my own reflection in hers, “neither Seishirou nor I could sense the presence of the god within you after it talked a last time. We both thought it might have disappeared for good.”  
_But we’re not so sure anymore._  
Because the Shinsho person appeared.  
“How can someone like Shishirui-dono – and someone like you – be _unsure_?”  
It was hard to speak when she was looking at me like that.  
“If no one lives on to remember us, to tell our stories, we simply cease to exist. You were, possibly, the only one still believing in that god, the only one remembering it.”  
But I forsook it – after that day.  
Even though it saved me.  
I decided – to forget it.  
“That’s also why we brought you along when we returned to your village. We wanted to see whether that would rouse something within you.”  
“And did it?”  
“Nothing changed about you, but ultimately – what is it that you think?”  
What is it that I think?  
_That I am full of dread._  
That explained some of the things the onmyouji ranted about, but still –  
Still –  
“Is it my fault it disappeared?”  
My voice was so small I could barely hear myself.  
_Because I had been too scared._  
Because I was an ungrateful, distrustful brat.  
“It’s not your fault.” She sighed, her expression softening ever so slightly. “If anything, because you diligently took care of that place that god was allowed to linger on a little while longer.” Suiten seemed to hesitate to continue, thinking over and over her own words. “We don’t have any attachment to humans, we do not feel the way humans feel, so take it with a grain of salt. But, perhaps, the god of the mountain disappeared because it exhausted itself helping you out. I doubt it had the power to carry on actions in the world – it must have decided to save it for one last act of gratitude.”  
Or something like that, she said.  
Not like I’d get it, she added.  
“I think I can now understand why Shinsho called me a monster.”  
Suiten didn’t answer me, probably realising there was nothing she could say that could lighten my heart, or perhaps because she was not concerned with my feelings at all.  
“Well, this is it.”  
I let it sink in.  
Plunge into my heart.  
Like a knife.  
“You still have some time to rest.”  
I didn’t answer, and she left.  
I didn’t sleep.  
I didn’t cry.  
I didn’t want to spill a single tear.  
I wanted to keep this feeling inside me.  
Heavy. Oh so heavy. 


	8. 007

“One day, the god descended from the very top of the mountain, and it gifted us lush, thriving earth, and filled the woods to the brim with prey for us to hunt. In return, all the god asked was a modest home, and for us to share the fruits of that miracle.  
“So, we built her a shrine, and celebrated her with offerings and prayers.  
“The god was a beautiful woman. Her hair, so silky and black, was reminiscent of fresh ink, it framed her white face, her dark eyes, her red lips.  
“How could we not be grateful for her favours?  
“And she, too, revelled in our gratitude.  
“This is why it is important we remind her – that we are thankful.  
“This is why we need to visit her.  
“This is why we ought to make her offerings.  
“And pray to her.  
“We want her to be happy, and stay with us, and provide us with her miracles –  
“Don’t we, Himiko?”  


Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t get any rest afterwards. As I was sitting there later in the morning with Suiten and Shishirui-dono, the stories my mother used to tell me filled my thoughts. I watched their mouths moving, but their words wouldn’t reach me. No matter what Suiten told me earlier that night, I couldn’t shake off the feeling of guilt. It was true that, if that story had never been revealed to me, I probably would have moved on with my own life, irresponsibly. I would outgrow my old self, leave my old skin and remorse and comforts behind me.  
_“Don’t we, Himiko?”_  
It was simply beyond me, I just couldn’t fully grasp it. Despite having been entangled with that world for the previous months, despite _knowing_ of that world, it was hard for me to comprehend it. I couldn’t understand the reasons – _her_ reasons, if we go by the old stories. Despite her being a too feeble existence, why did she save only me? Why didn’t she stop us from heading towards a last, definite catastrophe instead? Was Shinsho right in holding a grudge, then? A grudge against the gods’ whims – a grudge that should be held against us being weak, and weak-willed instead.  
_“Himiko.”_  
I finally heard them when Suiten slammed her hand on the table. She didn’t look exactly angry, frustrated perhaps. I wouldn’t know because I didn’t listen to a single word of their conversation.  
“I’m sorry – what did you say?”  
With arms and legs crossed, Shishirui-dono was sternly staring at Suiten, and she appeared to be returning the glare. Huh, did she fully inform him? Sigh, I didn’t like seeing them arguing _for real_ , honestly.  
“I was telling Seishirou here how we only did what was necessary.”  
“You could have dealt with it in a different manner, one that did not require maiming a man.”  
“Pft, you’re soft in such unexpected places. Why does it matter? It was a man willing to hurt a kid – the likes of him shouldn’t have a place in human society.”  
“I am not arguing the reasons, but the means. It is a matter of principle.”  
“Principle is going to get you killed.”  
Did they even want to hear from me? Such a déjà-vu.  
“Besides,” Suiten leaned on the table, Shishirui-dono unwavering before her fierceness, “we do not know whether he died, right Himiko?”  
“I guess –“ I couldn’t imagine he lived, though.  
He averted his gaze at last, to Suiten’s greatest satisfaction. “… I’ll try to find it out myself.”  
“And what will happen once you do?” She leant out even further, tauntingly, “Will you abide by your principles, Seishirou? Or will you do what has to be done?”  
“I shall settle this.”  
She clicked her tongue and fell back on her pillow, clearly displeased with such a cool-sounding, level-headed response.  
“Do as you please – from the sound of it you won’t ask me to join you, anyway.”  
She went from _overbearing, crushing presence_ to _adult throwing a childish tantrum_ way too fast. The thought must have crossed Shishirui-dono’s mind too: the instant he raised his eyebrows was more telling than any spoken word. 

On a side note, I’ve always liked observing people – or, as Fuyutsuki put it, staring at them until I come off as a creep. That’s actually why we started talking in the first place.  
I was being a creep. Yikes. 

“Anyway,” as she nonchalantly composed herself, Suiten finally turned to talk to me, “Seishirou and I agreed we should apologise to you.”  
“We should have told you about those circumstances, though admittedly we couldn’t have predicted this kind of scenario to occur at all.” He nodded, finally agreeing with Suiten.  
And then.  
Shishirui-dono prostrated himself.  
Before me.  
His forehead touching the ground.  
“I’m profoundly sorry. It was terrible blunder. An unseemly mistake.”  
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH THAT MADE ME WANT TO COMMIT SEPPUKU!!!  
“God, you’re so embarrassing Seishirou, I cannot bear to look at you. You broke my miko.”  
That was, actually, pretty accurate. I opened my mouth but I looked like I was gasping for air, unable to utter a single word as an answer.  
WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO SAY, I WANTED TO DIE.  
I could only bow and apologise repeatedly myself, even though I wasn’t sure for what. For having him do that, maybe. I truly was sorry about that.  
“Are you done apologising already? You will be lying on the ground soon enough if you keep at it.”  
The only acceptable place to lie was underground, in my humble opinion. That was where I felt I belonged in that moment. It didn’t seem the gesture brought any feeling of shame on the poor specialist: I was the only one flustered, and Suiten was clearly suffering from second-hand embarrassment. Her face was partially hidden behind her fan, which made her frown hard to read.  
“Let me investigate this. If someone like Shinsho went to such lengths, then I hope I can find him alive and hear what he has to say on the matter. It is possible I am failing to see something.” That personal failure – his whole clan’s failure – appeared to be the only thing to faze him. “Have you noticed anything odd, or different, since we visited your village?”  
Uhm.  
“I am not sure –“ I found myself pondering on what to say, fumbling for the right words to say. “In case this god is still somehow connected to me… will you… uhm... _eradicate_ it?”  
It’s not like I couldn’t think of anything strange. Something inexplicable.  
And that was exactly the reason why I had to ask.  
The reason why I had to know.  
“It will be taken care of. At first glance it might seem that the fact we’re dealing with a god makes it more complicated, but –” The words that followed, and the way he spoke them, made me feel like he saw right through me. Through my hesitation, and my inquisitiveness. “Gods are but oddities themselves. First and foremost, it is my duty to help you as a human.”  
_I see._  
However.  
If I had even a single chance to save it – her.  
“I will let you know if I can think of anything. Right now I can’t recall any event out of the ordinary.”  
I will take it. I finally had something to apologise for.  


I’m sorry, Shishirui-dono. I can’t let you take care of it.

“Make sure to think thoroughly about it, Himiko.” He probably didn’t fully believe me, but he had no choice but accept what I just told him. “One last thing. I brought you some tools you might need for the festival.”  
“Huh? Won’t you attend it?” Suiten, who had been silent until that moment, finally released me from her gaze. She had been peeking at me the whole time from behind her fan, from behind her light eyelashes. She might have been even less convinced than Shishirui-dono.  
“I will, but I more likely won’t be able to help with the preparations.”  
_I almost forgot about it._  
Right.  
“It is… very kind of you. Thank you, Shishirui-dono.”  
I bowed again, but at least I didn’t prostrate myself. A very noble-like and graceful bow, if I say so myself.  
“I also asked someone from my family to join you and lend you a hand.” So that was the extent of his trust. I was heartbroken. “Have you decided when it is going to happen?”  
“In two weeks from now, during the next full moon night.”  
“That’s a good choice,” said Suiten, pleased and excited.  
“Very well, then.”  
It was time for him to leave and search for Shinsho – or his body –, as well as inform this person to come to my aid as soon as possible. _Tch_.  
“Who is this, anyway?”  
It was Suiten who asked, I was still sulking. Even though I did say I had no idea of what I was doing at all. One can’t be consistent at all times.  
“My younger brother.”  
_Please make good use of him._

His younger brother.  
Heiichirou*.  
I could see the Shishirui clan had a naming aesthetic of sort.  
He arrived two days later in the early afternoon.  
Heiichirou had a completely different presence from Shishirui-dono, not only because he wasn’t as tall and his face had more delicate features, but because unlike his older brother his overbearing confidence made him come off as rude and arrogant. He had the kind of smirk that made you want to punch him in the teeth – I can say I didn’t like him. Not one bit. Another aspect in which he was different from his brother was the fact that he didn’t carry mythical weapons with him: when I inquired about it, he said his intellect was his sword. Whatever. In other words, he was more of a scholar than a specialist who works in the field. He didn’t get his hands dirty, all he was concerned with was explanation and theory.  
The younger Shishirui (apparently, not the youngest) was four years older than me, and he never failed to make me notice the differences between us – age, knowledge, status. What made me despise him the most was the way he treated me like some peasant kid who had to be taught everything about the ways of the world (which might have been the case, but I never handled well criticism, especially when uncalled for).  
Obviously, his flaws made his qualities all the more unbearable, so I won’t bother to mention them – I expect them to transpire somehow. If not, you’re free to dislike him with me.  
I am sure I don’t need to say it, but Suiten was absolutely amused. Madly delighted with my despair. 

“How did it happen?” was one of the first things he asked me, immediately confirming my fears that this guy was bad news, “You are completely unqualified to be a miko. You lack the lineage, or the qualities for it. It is an insult to all miko in Japan to call you one – you have just been playing at being one.”  
Thank you for explaining the obvious in such enlightening terms. At first I’d swallow my rage out of respect for his rank, but with each passing day my desire to abide by hierarchies was slowly worn down. In less than a week, he went from Shishirui-dono, to Shishirui-san, to Hei-chan. That really rubbed him the wrong way, and I couldn’t be more satisfied.  
He was let to stay with Suiten and I so that we really could make the most out of our time together. Such a blessing, huh?  
Heiichirou spoke at great lengths about the problems I had as a miko, but that destructive approach wasn’t really helpful at the moment. Besides –  
“We should do something rather than keep talking. Besides, Hei-chan, there’s at least one thing you got wrong about me.”  
“No one ever called me that, even when I was a kid. Drop it.” Surprisingly enough, he was curious to hear what I _actually_ had to say. Was he hoping for something to redeem my existence to his eyes? “Anyway, what is it?”  
“You said I don’t have the qualities required of a miko, but I have at least one. A god possessed me once.”  
“… You’re not talking about Suiten-sama, are you?”  
“… No.”  
“This couldn’t get any more – _wrong_.”  
Utterly unimpressed. Disappointed, even.  
“You’re so hard to please.”  
“I’m asking for the basics here.”  
_Back to the subject_ , that was basically his catchphrase. 

I was absorbed into the creation of the ceremony the two whole weeks. So much I could set aside the subtle, yet persistent feeling of guilt that nagged me since I took the decision to hide some minor (or not?) details from Suiten and Shishirui-dono. She never updated me on the specialist’s investigation, and I never asked. She never tried to look more into it, and I didn’t talk about it. There were just two instances that roused my suspicion once my mind had been cleared from the shock and the drowsiness: the fact Shinsho’s shady bells had an effect on me, and how, for a moment, I evaded his attack to my greatest surprise. Both could have very ordinary explanations: whatever the charm he used, those bells affected humans, too, and my training allowed me to stand my ground. But those two admitted it themselves: if someone like Shinsho decided to act, something must have been hiding right under our nose – my nose especially.  
What’s more, I wanted to believe the god of the mountain could be saved.  
I couldn’t live with the knowledge that, ultimately, she _disappeared_ because of me. My own fault. My own weakness.  
In the meanwhile, the whole village enthusiastically offered to organise the festival itself. The rumours about it reached well beyond the confines of the lake, and it was murmured in the streets that outsiders were expected to come. Fuyutsuki kindly gathered that kind of chitchat for me, and Heiichirou tended to confirm it. 

The festival eve came before I realised it.

At that point almost everything was ready, and so was my spirit. I still didn’t hear about Shishirui-dono, but it didn’t seem Suiten knew anything either; actually, I thought she looked pretty disheartened since he didn’t return yet. _He better return tomorrow or she’ll take great offence that he missed all of this,_ that’s what I thought. Heiichirou was hardly a substitute, even though she granted him some of her time. I have no clue what they talked about, although it wasn’t that difficult to imagine it given he was the scholar type of character. I was too afraid to ask because I didn’t want to put up with his antics more than necessary. 

When, on that festival’s eve, I found him all pensive outside by the torii, what I did was trying to collect information on my own, though he didn’t hear from his brother either.  
“If I were you, I wouldn’t expect to hear from my brother until he is done with what he’s pursuing. He has always been like this. But there’s no need to worry.”  
“I am not exactly worried…” He was the man Suiten chose, he wasn’t going to get killed on a job without us ever knowing about it. Of course, he was still human – even so, I couldn’t imagine anything bad happened to him. And if it did, he would have taken care of it.  
“Lucky you.”  
“Huh? Are you worried?”  
Heiichirou didn’t immediately reply. That scowl of his made me notice the resemblance with his brother.  
“He’s family, how couldn’t I?” _Even though it irks me._  
He mumbled those words under his breath, and I almost didn’t understand what he said. So that _there’s no need to worry_ was aimed at reassuring himself, rather than me?  
“Why? He is carrying out his duties on behalf of your family.”  
“I doubt the likes of you can understand.”  
“And here I thought I could dislike you a tiny bit less… I’m bothering to listen, at least give it a try.”  
He crossed his arms, staring at some indefinite point in space. Still scowling.  
“He doesn’t need to do everything on his own, always.”  
“I see… you’re feeling neglected and overlooked by your big bro.”  
When he turned with his finger pointed at me, his eyebrows now furrowed with unmistakable anger, I realised I must have triggered something. “Why must you put it in such crass terms! That’s not the point!” He sure was dramatic. I could only look as his rage unfolded, utterly startled. “And you’re the last person I want to hear it from. I know brother helped you and gave you some teachings – you, a nobody, a complete stranger.”  
“Consider this: I am a better little sister?”  
“I won’t let you in my family.”  
I didn’t plan to make my way into it, anyway. Nor did I see Shishirui-dono as a brotherly figure.  
“You have a lot of pent-up feelings, Heiichirou. I didn’t know relationships between siblings could be so complicated.”  
I was kind enough to not mock him with the usual moniker, and he seemed to appreciate it since he calmed down.  
“ _Acknowledgement_ at the very least would be much appreciated.”  
“Mhm… I don’t think your brother is the type of person who openly praises people. If it is of any comfort, he never praised me, not once.”  
“That’s because you’re _unpraisable_.”  
“Why must you insult me when I’m trying to be nice?”  
I was genuinely annoyed, and Heiichirou must have understood that much.  
“I’m sorry.” Such sweet, oh so sweet words. Please continue. “I was holding a grudge against you even before meeting you.”  
He should have never continued.  
“Your hatred knows no bounds...”  
Is that what they call jealousy? However he had no reason to be jealous of me. I didn’t gain Shishirui-dono’s attention, and he did everything he did because Suiten asked him to, or because he believed it was for the best. I didn’t have a single clue about how he felt about me, if he felt anything at all. If anything, I was the one who was jealous.  
After a short while in which both of us were silent (probably thinking of a way to end this conversation) Heiichirou spoke again.  
“At the beginning I thought my prejudices about you were correct, but you’re not too bad a person. It might take some time, but I know my resentment is irrational. I don’t hate you.”  
“Are you re-considering accepting me as an adopted member of your family?”  
“Hell, no.”  
We both chuckled, softly.  
“You are overthinking it,” I said, “because bad character must run in your family. Are you waiting for a man who can argue and quibble with a god to pet you on the head, telling you _well done_? The way I see it, you have the wrong expectations. Just because he doesn’t say it out loud, it doesn’t mean Shishirui-dono doesn’t acknowledge you. Why would he have sent you, of all people, to help me and Suiten-sama if he didn’t think you could handle it?” I looked at him, and feigned an embarrassed smile. “My case was a disaster after all, wasn’t it?”  
His expression relaxed, that pissed off frown gone, and for the first time he looked reassured. I had to trample on my own pride for that, but I didn’t regret it.  
“You’re right.” 

The sky was tinged blue and orange and red, the clouds dyed pink and azure. Despite the heat engulfing the shrine and the whole village in a summer haze, the breeze granted us a little relief.  
And then we spotted someone walking towards us like a mirage.  
“Ah, it’s Fuyu-chan.”  
She waved at me, but the moment she realised I wasn’t alone she put herself together and bowed to us when she arrived. I noticed she blushed upon greeting Heiichirou, which made me worry immensely for her future: was that the kind of man she was into? Really?  
They met before, and Heiichirou treated her more kindly and respectfully – then again, he treated everyone more kindly and respectfully compared to the treatment I got used to receiving. Yet I was confident we made some progress on that late afternoon.  
“I brought you your favourite, Hi-chan.”  
That meant what she was carrying was a treasure casket – one that contained mochi skilfully prepared by her mother. I was overjoyed about it but I didn’t let it show in front of Heiichirou.  
“Thank you. You’re always too kind.”  
She looked at me cocking her head to the side, as if she didn’t understand my tame reaction. I didn’t, either.  
“Well, I shall leave you ladies to your business.”  
Somehow, everything about that sentence sounded awkward and out of place, too. The term ladies didn’t apply to us and Fuyutsuki spending time with me was hardly business.  
Anyway, Heiichirou went off somewhere, and this time Fuyutsuki waved her hand – she kept doing it like an idiot, even when he gave us his back.  
“Can you be less obvious about it?”  
“What are you talking about?”  
“Ew, don’t make me put it into words for you.”  
“I think he’s a fine man.”  
That gave me plenty material to make fun of her for the rest of the evening.  


I was supposed to rehearse or, you know, do something productive with my time before the big day. What I ended up doing was fooling around with Fuyutsuki: I showed her the objects I was going to use and made her try the attire Suiten prepared for me. I gorged on mochi, ruining my appetite before dinner. Then we decided to do each other’s hair.  
“Should we trim it, Hi-chan? Isn’t it getting… too long?”  
“What?” I felt a weird agitation rising me, and I stared at Fuyutsuki’s reflection in the mirror, “No, don’t you dare.” My overly aggressive response surprised us both, and I immediately apologised for it. She was right: my hair grew to reach past my waist, and I couldn’t deny it got in the way, especially when I slept. Yet, I didn’t want to get it cut.  
“It’s fine. You are worried about tomorrow, aren’t you?”  
“Well, if I mess up it should be fine, it’s probably what everyone expects anyway. Especially that guy.”  
“I think you’re wrong about it – you are so stubborn about your preconceptions.” She tapped my head with the back of the hairbrush. “It’s true the younger Shishirui-dono looks like he is difficult to deal with, but he accepted to help regardless, right? I doubt he’d want to see you fail now, that would become his own failure.”  
She decided to make proper use of the brush, at last, running it through my hair. I hated it when she had a point. I thought he was immature for his age, yet, as Fuyutsuki said, not so immature. Moreover, after our brief conversation earlier I had a feeling all of those excruciating personality traits were but the result of his strife as he tried to measure up to his brother, to make him look at him. And then, perhaps, stepping outside of that shadow, findings his own place in the world.  
All of us – we were all struggling.  
“I guess it’s true.”  
I conceded. Fuyutsuki kept on brushing my hair, and I thought I felt weird in that position. I got used to combing Suiten’s hair myself, and sometimes I gave Fuyutsuki a hairdo as well.  
“So – what is worrying you?”  
“Nothing in particular, maybe I’m just anxious about tomorrow as you said.”  
“I see, so this is one of the things you don’t want to talk about.”  
I trusted Fuyutsuki, but from the very beginning I decided to not get her involved with this oddity business – meaning I wouldn’t talk about it. I didn’t tell her anything about Shinsho and the recent developments, although I would have liked to. However, I didn’t want her to shoulder an unnecessary burden, or to be worried, or worse, scared. I hated the idea of her being concerned for me. After my conversation with Heiichirou I realised that attitude hurt people around you. I understood that much. Nonetheless, that was the best I could do at the time.  
“It’s not that I don’t want to –”  
“Could there possibly be something you _can’t_ tell me?”  
“Mhm… not today. After this is all over, maybe.”  
“You just sounded like a tragic heroine… well, I won’t push you, even if I don’t think you need to shoulder it all on your own.” She started tying up my hair with a weirdly determined expression. “Whatever you’re going through, I will be waiting once it ends.”  
Ugh. Don’t make me cry.  
“This ponytail is awful, don’t bother to come help me tomorrow.”  
She hit me with the hairbrush again, and we burst into laughter. We laughed until our stomachs ached, we laughed ourselves to tears. 

I had a really hard time falling asleep once she left.

And just like that came the day the festival began.  
The day this tale neared its climax, and its end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *平一郎


	9. 008

And so – about that night.  
A night preluded by a perfectly ordinary day, although the air was electric, throbbing with excitement. 

I started my preparations as soon as Suiten woke from her deep slumber. The past days she had been elated, but she looked quite grumpy upon rising. Not her usual kind of grumpy, though.  
“Bad morning sleep?”  
She just turned over: I couldn’t even see her beneath that mountain of hair.  
“Has Seishirou returned?”  
“No, not that I know of.”  
“How dares he going off somewhere without me and then return late on this day.”  
“So that’s why you’re so gloomy...”  
I couldn’t blame Shishirui-dono if he went on his own in order to sort out his thoughts (feelings) on what happened. To be fair, I wasn’t quite over it myself, I simply had other things in my mind at that time.  
“Regardless of whether Shishirui-dono returns or not – we have a lot to do.”  
I got used to walking around her rooms in the twilight; finding everything I needed wasn’t that difficult. However, I was going to need some light eventually – those garments she made looked somewhat more complicated than usual. Her ability to create matter was extremely useful, and lately her attires had been quite decent. As if, at last, she understood how clothing worked. Anyway, she still went all out with this one.  
“Why do I get to dress quite normally, and you made yourself… _this_?”  
“Ha...” Her face emerged from the hair that had been covering her. “Seishirou’s younger brother didn’t budge one bit. The one I gave you was the only set he thought was acceptable. I liked others more, but he insisted they were too extravagant.”  
I was at a loss for words. I can’t believe that was what they discussed. Damn you, Heiichirou.  
You stole my chance to shine as a narrator and protagonist.  
“You didn’t have to listen to him, did you...”  
She couldn’t help but smirk. “No, I guess. But he seemed more informed on the matter than the two of us together. I decided to lend an ear because I find him amusing.” Suiten finally got up, stretching her arms. “Kaka, I didn’t expect you to want to wear something frilly and fancy.”  
“Why wouldn’t I like dressing up if I have the chance?” I realised I had to let it go. I’ll have to accept my non-fancy skirt and haori. “I’m going to let the light in.”  
“What time of the day is it?”  
“Uhm… late afternoon?”  
“Then do it gently.” 

As usual she receded in the shade, still I let in enough light for my eyes to see a bit more properly. Not that at that point I wasn’t uncomfortable in the dark, but still. There was also the fact Suiten refused to use mirrors (which I found weird), which didn’t make my task any easier. I started to dig for the first layer of cloth of Suiten’s kimono; the silk was so smooth it kept slipping off my fingers. There was also a white, pleated skirt for her, a silk belt, some other accessories. The colours were mostly brilliant blues and reds, and the sleeves and hems were heavily decorated with golden threads.  
“Ok, I think I have figured it out.”  
“I can dress myself.”  
“My experience says you can’t.”  
_You watch_ , she said. And I did, because I wanted to be sure she wasn’t going to leave that room in some outrageous fashion. She did everything perfectly, most likely because she wanted to prove a point.  
“How do I look?”  
I was unsure how to answer because it felt like a rhetoric question.  
“Very elegant,” was the first thought that crossed my mind, which sounded quite stupid when I said it out loud; nonetheless she looked satisfied, and sat down. That meant it was my turn to take care of things.  
She prepared a headdress for the occasion. Perhaps headdress isn’t the right word, since it was a collection of various, and some weirdly-shaped hairpins. However it was so rich it gave the impression of being a unique piece.  
“Are you nervous?”  
I didn’t expect to hear that question. Since our conversation in the bath we hadn’t talked much – there were some things she said that left me unable to approach her the way I got used to. In other words, I was still hurt.  
“A little bit.”  
I answered honestly. No point in lying about something that was probably easy to read on my face. My throat was dry and with the passing of the hours my face got paler and paler.  
“It will be fine. There is nothing to gain from being overly pessimistic.”  
“If you say so…” I continued my job of brushing and tying and pinning in silence. I didn’t understand why she would try to be friendly, and I was torn between wanting to refuse that attitude and yearning for it. Then I spoke, tentatively. “Why do you ask?”  
“What do you mean?”  
“You are trying to be sympathetic, but you said that none of the things you did were out of sympathy. That humans are all the same to you.” Lacking a mirror, I couldn’t see her expression, but at least she couldn’t see mine either. She didn’t reply, which made me assume she had nothing to say. “Well, I realised it was my fault for taking our relationship more personally than what it was supposed to be, and I can’t really blame the circumstances, can I? However, thank you for asking.”  
I had to move in front of her to check what I was doing (and if the whole thing looked as intended), and that cold, distant (perhaps detached) gaze of hers immediately reminded me of that blood-soaked night. It reminded of that smell, of the fear that froze me to the marrow of my bones.  
Well – I could still appreciate my job.  
“I know perfectly well what I said. Are you done?”  
“Uh? Ah… almost. I have to put on make-up.”  
That wasn’t exactly how I expected that conversation to unfold. I had the feeling she didn’t want to talk about it.  
But then, as I was out of her sight, she continued.  
“I’m not going to apologise for what I said, but I doubt that’s what you were expecting. What I can say, however, is that I have been lon– on my own, for a long time.”  
That didn’t explain much, except for the fact she probably didn’t interact with humans for some time. Even so, I wouldn’t have said she didn’t know how to approach or treat them (so long as she was in good spirits).  
“I don’t think I’m understanding what you’re trying to say.”  
“ _Hmpf._ ”  
Since I was done, I stepped away from her and put in order the things I used. I didn’t want us to be on bad terms that day, so I felt guilty for starting a conversation that could have waited. That was definitely on me.  
“What I mean is that I only know how to keep people away.”  
“I see.” Not really. I couldn’t get what she meant at that time, but I knew I wasn’t allowed to ask any more questions, to inquire any further. “I have to go now, please be mindful of your clothing and hair.”  
“Aye, aye… I won’t mess up your good work.”  
“How do you know it’s good without a mirror?”  
“I just know.”  
“Alright. Uhm… Suiten-sama?”  
“What is it?”  
Since we were being honest, there was something different I wanted to ask. However, I couldn’t find the words, or the determination to say it out loud.  
“Nevermind.” 

I slid the door close behind me and headed to my own room with many, clashing feelings piling up inside me. There were already some noises outside (after all, the shrine was the main stage), and I tried to imagine the paper lanterns rocking in the breeze, the mouth-watering scent of food, the loud chatter. If I pictured myself enjoying the festival as a normal person, I felt a lot more at ease. I knew all these people came to see Suiten, a god in the flesh, but that didn’t really help me relax (and apparently the rumours turned out to be true: during my stroll earlier I could already see many unknown faces).

You can do it, Himiko.  
I can do it.  
I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. 

What would mother and father think or say if they could see me?  
With that thought I started to dress myself.  
The red skirt. The white haori.  
I doubted that was the future they envisioned for me – not that it mattered anymore. The dead don’t get to feel proud or ashamed, and whatever they might have desired for me now lay on a path I could no longer tread. I didn’t know how long Suiten planned to keep me as her posing miko: from what she told me, it seemed she would have let me stay at least until they figured out my case. After that – after that, maybe, I could learn more and help people the same way I was helped.  
It’s not as though I could just move on, pretend that impossible things didn’t actually exist.  
That just wasn’t who I was.  
Who I am.  
My reflection suggested that much.  
I tied my hair on the back of my head, and wrapped it inside the white and red ribbons. It wasn’t that hard to do on my own, but I half regretted not asking Fuyutsuki to be with me, if anything to be completely certain I didn’t look like a fool. I inspected myself in the mirror – on the front, the back, the side, on the front again – re-did the bow closing together the two sides of the haori at least thrice.  
I took a deep breath.  
“Alright.”  
I picked the ceremonial blade Shishirui-dono brought me, carefully holding it with both my hands. Similarly to _yumewatari_ , it was a short sword. I decided to bring along my father’s knife, too, which was properly placed in a sheath hanging from my belt.  
“Alright, alright.”  
Everything else had been prepared beforehand, hence I had no reason to keep staring at myself in the mirror. It was still early, but I dreaded the chance of being late – I was going to use that time to focus. 

Or so I thought.

“You could have made your presence known, you know...” Lying in wait for me to leave my room was Heiichirou who was all dressed-up, too. Honestly, what the hell? Why was I the only one who didn’t get a say in what I wanted to wear? “You look weird with your hair down.”  
“It took you forever. I cannot picture how much longer it would have taken you to get ready had I announced myself.” He looked at me from the tip of my hair to my toes – though, given the height difference, he could take a look in a single glance.  
“What is it? Are you looking for something to criticise?”  
“Uh? No – I didn’t expect it, but it suits you.”  
“Well, thank you.” I loosely brandished the sword against him to put more distance between us (he made a weird face and yelled _you idiot_ ), then I started to walk towards the main hall. “What do you want?”  
“You’re always too suspicious – I came to check on you.”  
“Why are you being so caring all of a sudden...”  
“Well, I poured my heart into the preparations for this day.”  
“In other words, you’re afraid I’m going to mess up?”  
“ _You_ are afraid you’re going to mess up. _I_ think you’re going to be fine so long as you’re not too nervous.”  
“Ahah, how bad can it be?”  
Pushing the wooden door at the entrance, I let it wide open with unfaltering confidence.  
And, as soon as I did so, I tightly shut it close again with unyielding determination.  
“What the hell?!”   
“I told you there were going to be many visitors. My family is here as well.”  
“What –“  
“It is not just commoners either. I guess no one wants to miss the chance to see a god with their own eyes.”  
“I repeat, what the hell?!” I really wanted to sneak from the back entrance – well, I wish we had one first, and then that I could escape from there. “Ah.” I snapped out my panic for a moment. “You said your family is here? Has Shishirui-dono returned?”   
“No, not yet.”  
Ok, back to panicking.  
“I think you should do this, Hei-chan. Somehow, I feel you’d be better suited for this. I bet you’re also a good dancer.”  
“In the slight chance we might interact in public, please refrain from calling me like that. Anyway, I’m not going to do it, of course.”  
“Please?”  
“This,” he said, pointing at me, “doesn’t suit you at all.”  
“Why did your caring side leave so quickly… Where did it go?”  
“Listen.”  
He held my shoulders with his hands (more accurately, he tightly clasped them), and bent over to talk face to face to me.  
“Too close...”  
“Get your shit together.”  
“Too passionate!”  
I poked him again with the tip of the blade to have him let go of me. Then I stretched my arm, and properly held the sword against him to draw the ideal distance between the two of us.  
“Please don’t come any closer from now on.”  
“It doesn’t change what I just said. And stop using my clan’s relic as a toy.”  
Our banter continued for a while, but it’s not worth mentioning.  
At the very least, that helped to appease my anxiety. In the end, the number of people out there didn’t matter. I didn’t need to concern myself with the eyes watching me – after all, that was a ceremony for Suiten, thus she was the only one I needed to think about. After all that happened, after my doubting and hesitating and questioning, that ritual had a meaning to me that those present couldn’t possibly conceive.  
It was something – between the two of us.  
I was acting on my promise.  
_I offer you my life._  
“Did you really mean it? When you said you think I am going to be fine?”  
“I mean almost everything I say.”  
“Almost? What is it that you didn’t really mean?”  
“That’s none of your concern.”  
“Ok, ok, I get it.”  
“Then, I shall go ahead and wait for the main event.”  
“See you later.”  


Once alone I could hear the pounding of my heart; it drummed and drummed inside my ears. 

The days had started to become shorter, so the inside of the shrine was soon immersed in quasi-darkness. Kneeling on the floor, I let the sword down before me: I needed to get my thoughts together, and I needed my heart on this. My heart full of doubts. My heart – _full_. I had been asking and I had received answers to some of the questions sitting in the back of my mind, but I didn’t have the courage to ask what had been hiding on the back of my heart.  
The question I couldn’t find words for.  
The question I couldn’t ask out loud, not even to myself.  
_Suiten-sama, are you a god?_  
A preposterous, presumptuous question.  
As Shishirui-dono said, a god is but an oddity – a being capable of performing a miracle deserved such a name. However, didn’t most oddities perform such miracles, especially to the eyes of humans? Be it with malicious intent, be it with good intent, some more powerful, some less powerful. Isn’t their existence, non-ordinary, extraordinary, defiant of the laws of nature? Then did it mean they were all god-like? Or did it mean there were no gods at all? Neither of those options could satisfy me.  
Then, what is a god?  
A being who helps out mortals?  
An immortal?  
All-knowing?  
Almighty?  
Omnipresent?  
They could incarnate any of those qualities, and that wouldn’t necessary grant them a seat among deities. Moreover, during my brief experience I had the impression these _aberrations_ were all whimsical and capricious, that they hardly aligned with our human values. That is, despite oddities being born out of tales, folklore, slithering in and out of the human heart, we couldn’t possibly achieve a complete, common understanding. Which was fine.  
Then, I could only conclude that, much like beauty, a god was in the eye of the beholder.  
Questioning whether Suiten was one or not was misleading, a misplaced doubt. For Shishirui-dono, and everyone in this village. For Hei-chan, and Fuyu-chan. Shinsho, too. For all of them – Suiten was a god.  
And regardless of what I saw, regardless of what I felt, and doubted.  
Suiten was – is – a god to _me_.  
She is the one who comforted me, scolded me, supported me, hurt me, the one who took care of me, who held my hand to guide me, pull me, help me.  
She is the one who saved me. And if it wasn’t out of sympathy, that might have been for the best.  
And as a god, I revered her.  
As a friend – I loved her. 

I heard Suiten’s approaching footfall and the soft rustling of her robe. When she stood by my side, she asked what in the world I was doing sitting there in the dark.  
“I was thinking.”  
“That’s most worrying.”  
When I stood up I noticed her clothing didn’t have ugly wrinkles, and her hair was still the way I combed it. I appreciated she apparently didn’t return to sleep (or, if she did, she was careful about it).  
“I asked earlier – Shishirui-dono hasn’t returned yet.”  
“That bastard.”  
“He might have returned in the meanwhile.”  
She clicked her tongue, and answered with a snort. “It doesn’t matter. Are you ready?”  
I picked the sword from the floor, holding it as a proper family relic, as Heiichirou called it.  
“I’m ready.” 

I pushed on the entrance door again, Suiten closely following behind me. The air had an indiscernible, rich scent, the kind that you can taste in your mouth and that obfuscates your head. The night hadn’t fallen yet, but the moon was already claiming her piece of the sky, and with her were the stars that shone the brightest. The fires perched on their torches lit up our steps, as well as the faces surrounding us. There had been an incessant murmuring until that moment, but when we made our appearance everything fell silent; not a single whisper reached my ear. Even the drums ceased their slow, regular pounding. Those that looked the most dazed must have been the people that came from other villages, or so I assumed. Perhaps, despite having witnessed her before, the locals never truly got used to that bewitching sight. The silence – was so unnatural.  
I peeked at Suiten, who just shrugged her shoulders. Such a mundane reaction.  
We couldn’t just keep staring at each other the whole night, so I went ahead and put the sword on its mounting for the time being. Several offerings had been placed close to it – seeing how there was much more than we planned, they must have been bringing them as these people gathered here. I wondered if they were expecting me to bring them all to her. 

_This might take longer than planned._

I searched for Fuyutsuki in the crowd, but I couldn’t find her. Shishirui-dono wasn’t there either, the reason for which Heiichirou announced to us. I hated that he imposed like that, but I thought that must have been what his brother told him to do. I understood it made sense considering their clan’s connection to Suiten – but still. He was not as solemn as Shishirui-dono, but at least his dramatic personality came off as quite theatrical in that occasion.  
Hearing a voice must have broken the spell everyone was under, because finally I could hear some gasps and sighs and words spoken so softly they were simply incomprehensible. The drumming resumed, too.  
I picked a bowl containing rice, and brought it to Suiten. I knelt before her and handed it to her, a symbol of gratitude for saving these people from famine. When I discussed about it with her, and I showed her what I was going to do, she would give me those _whatever_ looks which made me laugh every time. However she looked absolutely austere for once, something else I was grateful for.  
I repeated the same procedure as many times as needed to bring her everything. Of course she still only had two hands, thus I placed the rest at her feet. The variety of gifts was quite astounding: there were also a few precious hairpins and earrings, silk, beautifully decorated kimono... Beyond meaningful offerings, some must have wanted to make more regular gifts, too. 

When I returned to my spot, finally emptied, the eyes I could clearly see sparked with a joyous light, thought that could be because of the fires fluttering and shivering in the mild summer breeze.

They disappeared from my sight when I knelt one last time and closed my eyes.  
Breathing in, deeply.  
Breathing out, lengthily.  
Until that moment I had been surprisingly calm, but tension started to get a grip of me again.  
The drums were just long echoes in my head.  
The scents in the air wrapped everything and turned it into a mirage.  
I grabbed the katana by the hilt, and opened my eyes. 

And I felt like I woke up, but in a dream.  
Before me, staring right at me, there was someone.  
Well, something.  
With long hair that might as well reach past her feet.  
Dark, irate eyes.  
And red, sulky lips.  
“You ought to stop this.”  
I squinted my eyes many times, but she just didn’t disappear.  
I realised that the term _something_ couldn’t properly describe her, as she was more like a presence. More ghostly than that ghost child I met. I could see right through her.  
Yet, despite her ethereal body she seemed to be able to touch and interact with the world around her, as she vehemently held the sword by the tip of its blade. She grabbed it so tightly, a human would be bleeding profusely already.  
I wanted to turn towards Suiten and be sure she was seeing what I was seeing, but I couldn’t.  
To those who most likely couldn’t see it, it must have looked like I froze. Indeed, I couldn’t move a muscle. Not even my lips, I couldn’t even blink.  
After all, I knew it right away.  
“Are you going to desert me? Are you going to make me disappear with your own two hands?”  
“What are you talking about –“  
I tried to whisper so that I couldn’t be heard and look like I went mad (though, admittedly, that might be mistaken as part of the actual ceremony), but I couldn’t really hear my own voice.  
“After the ordeal I went through to help you – is this how you’re going to show your gratitude?”  
I finally managed to turn towards Suiten: I could tell she was looking at her, too, but she didn’t move either. Perhaps she was waiting to see how it was going to develop. At the very least I knew I wasn’t imagining it.  
“What I was trying to do was exactly the opposite,” I finally managed to say, trying to release the sword from her grip, “I was trying to save you.”  
The god of the mountain – or the dregs of it – laughed. She laughed loudly – she laughed angrily.  
“Is that really what you think?”  
She finally let go of the sword.  
But as soon as she did, with both her hands – white, thin, in appearance ever so delicate – she grabbed my neck, her long fingers firmly wrapped around it; enough to choke me, enough to let me struggle still. I found out I could touch her, too, when I got a hold of her wrists, but I was so bewildered that I could only let myself be overpowered. She probably lacked any weight, and yet she easily forced herself on me, pushing me on the ground. At that point I was too concerned with being killed just as usual to worry over what other people were seeing.  
“If I’m going to disappear, I might as well take you down with me. After all, isn’t that what you have been thinking this whole time? That you should have died, buried in fire and ashes. Or that you should have died well before that. For a while, I feared I made a mistake, saving you from your father. _I_!”  
Clearly, I couldn’t answer.  
Clearly, I didn’t need to answer.  
“Ha… I don’t think I can do this. I don’t want to disappear either.”  
Her rage quickly turned into sadness, and she suddenly let go of me.  
The air that immediately filled my lungs made me cough violently – a feeling that reminded me of that night. Still lying on the ground, I glanced at Suiten who was standing still, a vaguely shocked look on her face.  
“Wh… the…” _What the hell_ was what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t quite speak yet.  
“Ka...” she smiled in an obviously forced way. “I didn’t think she was going to kill you.”  
_You thought or you hoped she wouldn’t?_

She backed away from me, and I crawled away from her. I was so shocked I struggled to get on my own feet, and hadn’t Heiichirou rushed to help me, I probably wouldn’t have succeeded.  
“Are you ok?” He talked into my ear, meaning that everyone was more likely confused and had no idea what was going on.  
“I’m sorry, I messed up.”  
“This is not the moment to be sorry, what’s the meaning of _that_?”  
He gestured towards the god of the mountain. She wasn’t even looking at me anymore: all I could see was her back, and the fact it seemed she was reflecting on something. She almost looked nervous.  
“Didn’t I tell you that a god possessed me...”  
“I’m sorry, I didn’t take you too seriously.”  
“Please perish.”  
My breath slowly returned to normal, but I had to recover from the scare.  
From the surprise.  
“Seishirou’s younger brother,” Suiten finally approached us, speaking softly. Why was everyone whispering? Did it even matter anymore? “Please find a way to put an end to this. We can’t continue as we planned.”  
“I’m not sure how I am supposed to do that –“  
“Just do it.”  
Suiten’s tone didn’t leave room for questions or hesitation.  
“I can stand now, thank you.”  
_Almost._ My legs still felt extremely weak.  
“Are you sure?”  
“I’m sure.”  
However, _Seishirou’s younger brother_ didn’t manage to leave: Suiten grabbed him by the collar to stop him, which would have made me laugh if only I had the energy for it.  
“Wait, wait, something else is coming.” A big smile finally showed on her face, and both Heiichirou and I just looked at her puzzled, until she declared: _he has returned_. “Seishirou is back.”  
“How do you know...”  
“Oh, I can smell him. I could never mistake it for someone else’s smell.”  
“I really don’t know how to retort to this...”  
Heiichirou didn’t know, either.  
If you could find his smell all along, why nag me every time, asking me if he returned?  
“Anyway I was referring to something else that was coming.” 

As soon as she said so –  
A _rumble_ came from the belly of the mountain – like the growling of a waking animal.  
The terrible noise caught the god’s attention, too. 

“Here is your excuse to have everyone leave. Very well, now I shall take my leave.”  
“W-what?”  
“I’m going lend Seishirou a hand. I’m sure this time he needs my help. You take care of this other problem. You think Seishirou and I are fools, but we knew all along you were hiding something – you must have thought _I’m going to take care of this on my own_. Go ahead and do it, this is indeed your own problem.”  
I really did all of this to myself all by myself, didn’t I…  
Then, without much of a warning –  
She jumped.  
She left just like that, with a gust of wind.  
Well, ok then.  
“Heiichirou – make sure everyone leaves safely, ok? And look for Fuyu-chan for me, I couldn’t see her.”  
“You don’t think you can take on this on your own –“  
“But I can. I have to.” I simply had no other choice. “It is as Suiten-sama said. This is my problem, and I have to fix it.”  
He was about to reply, but whatever he wanted to say, he kept it to himself.  
Whatever the cause, that roaring coming from the mountain was a noise everyone could hear: when Heiichirou talked, there wasn’t much protest. Not to mention they all saw Suiten fleeing like that, which was a suspicious fact in itself. I looked as the crowd dispersed, how everyone, one by one, left. Eventually it was just me and the god of the mountain, who still paid little attention to me. As a precaution, I recovered the katana which I had let go earlier.  
The wind rose, causing a few lights to go out.  
The offerings, the instruments, everything was abandoned there.  
A quite desolate sight.  
As if they all got spirited away.  
“This is my fault.”  
With just the two of us, I could easily hear her.  
“You just tried to kill me, so… yeah.”  
Just how many, human and non-human, wanted me dead?  
“I wasn’t talking about that.” She finally turned towards me, looking sincerely regretful. “I’m sorry, Himiko. Perhaps I lost my temper, but I acted out of self-preservation.”  
_And, maybe, out of jealousy._ That’s what she admitted.  
“Please don’t talk to me as though I am supposed to understand what is going on right now.”  
“You are right. Where should I begin?”  
“Imminent problems first. What is your fault?” 

“The mountain reached its breaking point – because the god inhabiting left.”

Ahah.  
Give me a break.  


“Or, to explain it using her words from earlier – because she _deserted_ it.”


	10. 009

What was I supposed to do, but laugh? Maybe I should say _thank you_?   
Thank you for coming to my failure of a ceremony and looking at it from the shadows.

“Oooh.” The god of the mountain reacted in an overly cute manner; I couldn’t guess whether her surprise was genuine or fake. “We met!”  
“Uh?” 

You must know already who was standing where the crowd once was.  
Minus one arm.  
Status: alive.  


“What do you mean you met – no, nevermind, didn’t Shishirui-dono find you?”  
“Oh, he did. We had a long talk.”  
“Ehehehe.” The god ran towards me giggling, and she crouched behind me, wrapping my shoulders with her arms. That sure was uncomfortable after her stunt. “This might be my fault too, but it was not intended.”  
“That sounded like the prelude to a long explanation.”  
Shinsho didn’t move from his spot, he just looked at me with a tired expression. That sort of wound must take a toll on you, no matter how experienced or skilled a person you are. Honestly I could only imagine he survived thanks to some trick up his sleeve.  
Yet – _and yet_.  
“I can’t believe you have the guts to show yourself...” I couldn’t help but muse out loud. “Just how determined are you?”  
“I was promised the rest of my body was going to be left intact, you see –“ he snickered, as though he couldn’t quite believe his own words – the word he had be given; nevertheless, he still came. “I had to make a promise myself, of course. That I wouldn’t lay a finger on you.”  
“Why would Shishirui-dono negotiate with you? Suiten-sama wanted you dead for sure, and as much as he disagreed with her actions, he’s no friend of yours, isn’t he?”  
“You can say we quite dislike one another.”  
“Then, why?”  
“This time, I’m here to help. This is still my field of expertise.” His gaze shifted towards the god of the mountain whose head was resting on my shoulder. She made me feel like she was using me like a human shield. “You see, I was victim myself of some misunderstandings. And now that I see the two of you like this, I think I can see what happened.”  
_But don’t get me wrong._  
“It doesn’t mean I don’t despise you.”  
So Shishirui-dono truly didn’t believe me. I thought he was suspicious at most… some adults are scary, they see right through your lies. Or was I bad at telling them?  
“And how are you going to help me, exactly?”  
I was afraid of just asking, because there was just one way a man like this could help me.  
“I’m going to eradicate what is afflicting you. It lost every right to be termed a god, so I won’t call it such.”  
“Shishirui-dono could have done so himself.”  
And I refused his help.  
“The circumstances are peculiar, and as you can imagine, Shishirui is tending to other matters.”  
“Peculiar… in what way?”  
“For him to use _kokorowatari_ on you, he should be able to discern where the oddity ends and you begin. It might be standing right next to you now, but that’s just its effort to project its original form. The reason why it evaded both Shishirui and that god’s eyes was just because there is hardly any difference between the two of you. This, however, doesn’t mean it’s not possible to find it.”  
I glanced at the god of the mountain, who answered with an apologetic smile.  
“I’m sorry, taking over your body was the only way for me to help you considered the state I was – am in. Actually, it was the only way to help both of us.”  
Shinsho’s expression changed so drastically, it almost sent a shiver down my spine. He looked disgusted. As if he could barely stand to look at us.  
“That couldn’t have been enough. You must have had another connection to this girl to make all of this happen.”  
_Oddities taking over humans is just a common phenomenon after all._  
She sighed. I knew that, the more he inquired, the more he found out, the more exposed she would be. She would be vulnerable, an easy target for extermination. Yet she answered that question, fearlessly, or perhaps stupidly. She answered it, but she was talking just to me.  
“Your mother – she was really dear to me. I never had preferences among humans, but at that point she was one of the few who would come visit me, and the last one who could actually see me. When she came to me, lamenting the fact she didn’t seem to be able to conceive a child as she desired, I decided to help her. Gods oversee a variety of things, fertility just happens to be one of them.  
“At the time I could hardly maintain my physical form, but I could still perform such menial tasks. She believed so much in me, I couldn’t let her down. It would have brought shame on me as a god if I failed.  
“Since you’re here – I didn’t fail.  
“Don’t make that displeased face.  
“Anyway, in short, I made your birth possible. Your mother was so, so happy, and I must admit I was, too. You were her child, but in a way, you were mine too – and she always acknowledged it with the name she gave you.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“Your mother’s name was Haruhi, wasn’t it?”  
I nodded. Our names shared one character, but I couldn’t see where that was going.  
“ _Miko_ can be written literally as god’s child*.”  
Shinsho finished the explanation in her stead, at which the god simply nodded.  
“I think this is the sort of connection that man is interested in, but don’t expect him to really understand it.”  
I could barely process everything she said. I heard Shinsho mutter something, but I wasn’t sure I made sense of it. 

_This is complicated._  
Something like that. 

“You are my perfect match. And now that everyone else is gone – now that your mother is gone, too, you’re the only proof I exist.”  
“How did you meet him…”  
I fast-forwarded to the present, which seemed a pressing matter.  
“Oh, on that night when your village burned down. Earlier you came to visit me, and it pained me to be unable to help you. The only way I could do so was using you as a vessel of sort – but that meant abandoning my original vessel.”  
That is, the mountain.  
“Well, I made my choice. You don’t remember about it because I had complete control over you – your body, your mind. So, don’t feel guilty about what happened.”  
“W-why – what happened?”  
“Our friend ran into us at a most unfortunate time.”  
“Just tell me, stop talking in such a roundabout way.”  
“After losing his heart, your father must have lost his mind, too. When he assaulted you, I thought he was going to kill himself afterwards – but I couldn’t let you die. I didn’t care about his life, though.”  
My heart was racing in my chest.  
I felt it throb in my throat.  
“He didn’t know _you weren’t you_ , obviously. And finally I could help you out – after you came to me so many times, I could fulfil your request. He had a sheathe on his side, but the dagger in it wasn’t properly secured. So I took it and stabbed him.”  
One time.  
Two times.  
Three times.  
She tapped on the sheathe on my side.  
“With this dagger. Until he let go. I wounded his side, though. I didn’t try to actively kill him, as much as I would have liked to.”  
At that point, I was all shivers. Cold sweat was rolling down my forehead.  
“When I left your house he was still alive. In pain, but alive. That’s when I encountered him. He found me committing my crime, though I would argue I only did the right thing. Anyway, by the time we were done talking your father died, but I’m _pretty sure_ I wasn’t the one who killed him.”  
“The knife wasn’t dirty when I picked it.”  
I clung to the smallest details. That was the only thing I could do.  
“I cleaned it, because it was a pretty knife. And I thought that once the village would wake from its slumber and his body was found, you’d obviously be the first one they were going to blame. They knew and they did nothing, but they would still hunt you down. Humans are just like that.”  
“But the knife was still there, I’d be probably be gone somewhere. They were going to suspect me anyway...”  
“Hehe… I didn’t think it thoroughly, after all I was interrupted.”  
Besides –  
It’s not like there was a tomorrow to await them.  
“You can vouch for me, can’t you?” She spoke to Shinsho, and finally she released me from her embrace. Standing behind me, her hands were still on my shoulders. “We saw it together. It wouldn’t happen normally, but since I left my original vessel it all became possible. Your father became that ravenous thing, and spread chaos in the village.”  
_And then chaos took care of the rest._  
“This man says he wants to help, but back then he consciously left without doing a single thing. I wouldn’t trust him. After that – well, I ran away, but my grip weakened, and I slowly faded away.”  
_You should remember the rest._  
And I did.  
“Even gods can’t escape divine punishment.”  
“How could you say that...” I was almost certain that being held was the only thing keeping me from falling to the ground again. I was hurting – in my chest, in my head, my whole body was hurting. “What the hell did those people have to do with this?!”  
I yelled and immediately ran out of breath.  
I could barely keep my hold of the sword, so much I was shaking.  
Shinsho – didn’t answer me.  
My voice simply echoed shortly, swallowed by a deathly silence – by indifference.  
“I thought you were compliant with the oddity’s actions, which made you just as guilty of what happened. However, since it’s not exactly the case, I shall be lenient.”  
“Don’t make me laugh. I’m not accepting your help.”  
I pointed the sword at him.  
Still trembling.  
Shaking to the tip of the blade.  
“Do you understand what it means?”  
“Neither of us is going to be exterminated.” I said with all the conviction I could gather, but that willpower wasn’t enough to stop my tears. Shinsho looked all blurry, still I didn’t stop. “I made a pact myself, don’t you remember?” _Or were you in too much pain, too frightened to hear us talk that night?_ “I promised Suiten-sama I shall kill you myself.”  
“I see. So this is how it’s going to be.” 

I meant those words as I uttered them.  
My bewilderment, my sadness, all of those feelings became so, so small. I didn’t remember ever feelings such unbridled anger, and I can’t remember feeling it again after that night.  
I was upset – about everything.  
About what I heard.  
About what the god did.  
And what Shinsho didn’t do.  
But above all, I was upset with myself.  
For what I couldn’t do on my own.  
For the doom I, ultimately, brought about those people.  
For the fact that, had I known, I probably would have made the same mistakes.  
Over, and over.  
Not that I thought it was my fate, or anything tragic and grand like that. 

I – was just weak.

“This isn’t a good idea.” The god of the mountain spoke, and suddenly she was in front of me. “ _Let me take over_. You can’t be serious about facing this guy.”  
“Don’t you dare. I’m not going to rely on you again.”  
I should have never pushed my fights onto others to begin with.  
“Think about it. I cannot help you in any other way as I am now. You should look for that other… god… before doing anything reckless.”  
As soon as she mentioned Suiten, a few raindrops started to tap softly against the ground. I hadn’t realised it, but clouds had gathered above our heads, covering the moon and the stars, engulfing us in the dark. As the wind got stronger, the few remaining lights went out as, and the drizzle abruptly became a downpour.  
“I know it’s reckless.” I finally managed to calm down, or at least, I stopped to tremble. My clothing became heavy, which made me quickly realise how much of a hindrance it was going to be. “Still, it’s what I’m going to do.”  
“I might be in a miserable condition, but I could still stop you.”  
“Then try it.”  
She didn’t do anything.  
She only looked at me briefly before averting her gaze, her expression the one of someone who sees everything they worked for, everything they tried to achieve slowly but inevitably falling apart. The expression of someone who had regrets. It was fair: I had plenty of them, too. 

I lost sight of her, as though she melted in the rain. I guess she could disappear in the same way she appeared, out of nowhere.

“I’m asking you one last time,” Shinsho’s voice thundered over the loud drumming of the rain, and he made a few steps towards me; luckily that noise covered the tinkling sound of those bells, otherwise I would have had to find an alternative solution against it. “Which side are you taking?”  
Wasn’t it obvious?  
“Surely enough, I am not taking _your_ side.”  
His gait looked somewhat imbalanced, perhaps due the fact that his wounds hadn’t completely healed yet. However, I was not so arrogant to believe that a missing limb was a handicap for him.  
Moreover, he took precautions.  
This time he was wielding a katana himself – he unsheathed it using his left arm.  
I wondered if the left hand was his dominant hand.  
But more likely, someone like him would just be ambidextrous.  
“Your choice is most unfortunate.” 

For a human who was maimed, he was awfully fast. 

In the blink of an eye his sword clashed against mine with what sounded like a loud, painful shriek. He must have decided to deal with me as a human, coming for the killing in such a straightforward way. I deliberately forfeited the status Shishirui-dono negotiated for me, after all; that made me, again, an enemy.  
That made me guilty.  
But I could have never accepted that compromise.  
In retrospect, what Suiten did to him didn’t even come close to feel like retribution.  
The fact I could then comprehend her bloodlust – scared me.  
“This is – the only choice I could make.”  
I backed away and quickly grabbed my knife, aiming for his right flank. I, however, was not so firm with my left hand, and my clumsiness gave him the perfect chance: to my surprise, he simply dropped the sword to grab me by the arm and twist it behind my back, pushing me with my face against the entrance door. That forced me to let go of the sword when my wrist cracked with a painful snap. That was the first time I’d broken a bone, and the pain caused my to cry some bitter tears. Yet, as much as I was in a blind spot there wasn’t much Shinsho could do himself: he would have to let go of me first.  
Whatever he wanted to do it, he had to do it fast.  
Which meant, I had to be faster at evading him.  
I barely dodged the punch that came, which passed by my ear with a hiss and broke into the door’s wood. _That_ could have easily smashed my face – not like there was much time to think about such possibilities.  
The pain running through my arm, I had to drown it in anger.  
I released myself and, taking advantage of that lucky situation, I aimed for his back. But my luck ran out already, as he freed his arm and all my knife stabbed was a piece of wood. He threw it away, disarming me. I tried to reach for the sword he had dropped, but he got a hold of me before I could get close to grab it – this time he didn’t immobilise me for long.  
He threw me against the door – or, well, through it. Perhaps because there was a hole in it already, it shattered because of the impact. I was pretty sure I broke something else, or at least dislocated something.  
I was in utter pain.  
At least inside the shrine the rain didn’t lash against my face.  
At least, that was my territory.  
“What are you doing?!” The god of the mountain appeared again. I was lying on the ground, she must have been crouching close to me. “You’ll get killed at this rate. How many more times you need to do this before you’re satisfied?!”  
“I’m not punishing myself. But it seems it’s not enough to be angry.”  
I understood I was guilty, but he sure wasn’t going easy on me.  
Not that I expected him to. 

As he stepped inside, I slowly managed to get on my feet. My right arm was in pain (eye for an eye, arm for an arm), my right shoulder and left side burnt as if on fire. He had the time to get back his weapon, while I was still empty-handed.  
It was dark inside, but the lightnings would cast an eerie, brief light on his figure.  
Summoning all of my forces – I retreated further inside.  
I didn’t want to run anywhere, but I couldn’t face him like that.  
Because he quickly caught up, I was slowed down as I tried to dodge the sharp side of his katana. That chase caused a fair amount of destruction inside the shrine: the floors, the doors, nothing was spared from being cut, torn, pierced, slashed. The pain stole my breath, and the few times he managed to land a hit I had to hold back my screams. They were but superficial cut (perhaps I had to be thankful for the layers of clothing he had to rip through), but it hurt.  
I wasn’t planning on dying that night. And if I was going to die, at least I wouldn’t let myself be killed.  
I only had to reach the innermost chamber of the shrine.  
It seemed to take forever.  
“You looked so confident before, but you’re going to run away the same way you did last time?”  
“Shut up.” 

I forced open the door to the chamber, which was covered in perfect darkness. That was Suiten’s favoured place during the day – there were no windows, therefore no lights to bother her sleep. During the night, it really seemed to step into a black wall, and that must have taken Shinsho aback because he suddenly halted his steps.  
“What’s the point of hiding here?” He spoke from the entrance. “I might not see you, but you can’t see me either.” After that, he actually entered. “Blinding me won’t stop me from finding you.”  
That was not the only reason I ran there.  
He probably realised – when an aching grunt escaped his mouth.  
The short sword I used during the ceremony wasn’t the only katana Shishirui-dono brought.  
The rest, among which another odachi, had been stored in that room.  
But more than that –  
“I’m afraid I am a lot more used to this than you are.”  
I went for the tendons of his legs.  
Not only I knew that room like the palm of my own hand, but dealing with Suiten all those months I had grown accustomed to moving in the dark. It became like a natural habitat my eyes easily adjusted to. 

When Shinsho fell on the ground with a thump, I plunged the blade in his left shoulder, causing him to shriek. I heard the blood gushing out his wound, and when I tried to pull out the blade, he tried to stop me by grabbing it. So, I pulled with more strength, forcing him to let go, likely slashing his one remaining hand.  
Then, I stabbed his thigh.  
Then, his side.  
My breath turned short and irregular, his screams longer and louder.  
Whenever I pulled the katana out, he subtly squirmed in agony.  
The smell of blood was revolting, but unlike the last time, I couldn’t feel a single thing.  
Not. One. Thing.  
I could only realise it when I stopped, the heaving of my chest becoming more regular. He stopped making noise, too, but he wasn’t dead – just suffering.  
I lowered the sword again, its sharp end scratching Shinsho’s neck. I felt nauseous and dizzying and aching all over. I felt my eyes getting filled with tears again.  
“You didn’t have to save me, or my father. How could you just watch as it happened?”  
He didn’t answer. He only wheezed heavily.  
“Does your resentment run so deep? Is your grudge so rooted in your heart, you will gladly witness others suffer the way you did? Is this the kind of person you have become?”  
_Is this the kind of monster you have become?_  
“You despise the gods so much, and yet you started playing at being one. The gods’ inaction, your inaction – they all yielded the same result.”  
Grief.  
Loss.  
Deep wounds.  
“Honestly… I pity you.”  
_And I pity myself._  
He was still silent, except for his rasping breath.  
“You won’t pursue me and the god of the mountain ever again.”  
_Answer me._  
“I have yet to fully understand it, but the way things are now this god will disappear with me the day I will die. Being first forgotten, and then fading into nothingness – doesn’t it satisfy you?”  
_I said answer me._ “If you do this, the right order will never be restored in this area.”  
“I – We will find a solution.”  
_Now promise me._  
“Fine.”  
“If you come back, I shall keep my promise.”  
“I get it. You win, kid.”  
My hands started trembling. Then my arms, my shoulders.  
The katana clanked when it fell on the floor, and I stepped back.  
My whole body burnt, tears stung my eyes.  
The cold breeze coming from the entrance made me shiver, but that was where I was headed. With hesitant steps, full of nothing but a despair I couldn’t understand – just like that night, I wandered like that. 

I needed to find Suiten, and Shishirui-dono.  
“You’ll never make it in this condition.”  
“I must.”  
When I was finally outside I went to pick my father’s knife. It dug into the wood, and it was still there even after it had been tossed like that.  
I put it in its sheath.  
And then, once I ran out of tears – I started to laugh.  
From the bottom of my heart. Making my inside twitch in hopeless torment.  
I had to say it to myself. I had to repeat it to myself. At least once. 

_I won._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *"Miko" has two alternative writings, 巫女 and 神子
> 
> And so -- here's the big reveal chapter at last. I hope it didn't disappoint you. 
> 
> As always, I'd love to hear your feedback.


	11. 010

I – we started to head to the mountain.

The feelings that rushed through me, that made my blood boil and bubble had slowly disappeared. Eventually, more than walking I was just dragging my body, but still I persevered to the best of my abilities.  
“So – why is it that you made an appearance only now?”  
Suiten was chatty, but she held a candle to the god of the mountain. I decided to have her talk to keep me awake and going, but it wasn’t the greatest idea I had until that moment. And as you know, I made many poor life choices. At the very least the rain had ceased, but big, heavy clouds were still passing through the night sky. I had no idea what time it was.  
“Oh, I was just waiting for the right time. For a while, I was actually asleep – I was roused when you returned to my home, but I still thought it was better to wait a little longer. The ceremony infuriated me, so I decided to make my move.”  
“Huh… were you afraid I was going to forget and move on? For being a god, you sure are fearful.”  
“Well, it wasn’t just that. It just didn’t sit right with me. What did that woman do to steal you from me?”  
“You sound like those parents that treat their children as their property...”  
“Anyway, that’s about it.”  
Changing the subject, I see.  
“So it was because of you that Shinsho’s weird charm – or charms? – had an effect on me? And that I somehow survived our first fight?”  
“Uhm? No, you’re only half correct. I had nothing to do with the latter.”  
“Then I must be really good.”  
“If you were good, you wouldn’t be in this state.”  
She had a point. Still no sign of Suiten and Shishirui-dono, and I was already running out of breath. I had to stop from time to time, but I never allowed myself to sit down fearing I’d never manage to get up.  
“… There is something you didn’t notice, though.”  
“What is it?”  
“Your hair.”  
“What about it?”  
“It has been growing quite fast, hasn’t it? I thought, if I had to be in here for the rest of my existence, you might as well look a bit like me.”  
“This is disturbing in a way I can’t quite explain.”  
“It is so pretty, though.”  
“I’m going to cut it as soon as I return.”  
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeh?!”  
She screeched like a little girl – I wouldn’t have been surprised if my eardrums burst causing me to bleed (it didn’t happen but it still works as an _extremely accurate_ figure of speech).  
“Maybe I wouldn’t have thought about it had you shut up.” 

She pestered me about it for a while, until I slipped where the path started to be covered in gravel. Because I was lucky as usual, I accidentally shielded myself with my broken arm, causing me to writhe in pain when I was on the ground. The god of the mountain asked me if I was alright, but I really couldn’t bother to answer such a dumb question. I lay on my back, and a piece of clear sky was right above my head: I could quickly glance at the stars before the clouds covered them once again.  
How could everything go this wrong?  
I felt as though detached from my own self.  
The very feeling of my body felt unreal.  
And I started to think that searching for those two might have been a mistake. I was going to get in their way as a healthy person, in that condition I could only burden them all the more.  
“So, the fact you gave up your original vessel is the cause for this spirit war?”  
I forced myself to speak as I caught my breath. I thought that if I was going to give up there, I might have died for real – something I wanted to avoid if possible.  
Such a refreshing feeling.  
“I’d say it was the last straw. Something was going on before it.”  
“What do you mean?”  
Perhaps they solved it on their own already, but if they didn’t, that could be useful information for Suiten and Shishirui-dono. Since I wasn’t sure she was going to share it willingly with Suiten, I assumed it was better to look into it myself.  
“Well – I don’t know about the details, but I am quite sure your Suiten is not the original god of the lake. I know because that god liked to take on the shape of a water snake.”  
“And how do you know? Do you do godly gatherings? Do gods chat over tea? Do you meet like that?”  
“Eheh, no, silly.”  
Apparently she didn’t know what sarcasm was.  
“Well, your snake friend had been dormant for a while. Many people suffered drought and famine.”  
“I think it was a situation very similar to my own. Anyway – when the other one appeared, the snake was gone. That in itself brought instability in our world.”  
“But Suiten-sama took its place, shouldn’t her presence have brought order once again?”  
“I guess, but it’s not what happened.”  
Her smile was sibylline as she was plainly wondering whether to speak out her mind.  
“You don’t need to be delicate. I know.”  
Well, to be fair mine had been just a suspect. But if she spoke like that – wasn’t she just confirming my doubts weren’t misplaced?  
“And you are fine with it?”  
“Yup.”  
“You have changed over the past months –“  
“I have.” That’s called growing up. “Anyway, if I understood it correctly, all of a sudden two major balancing forces disappeared from the spiritual world. No wonder oddities are going rampant.”  
The air – was noxious.  
Like a looming bad omen.  
I had yet to see something, but it was more than sufficient to feel it. It was enough to give me goosebumps.  
“It is likely that specialist figured it out already, but even then a human won’t be able to do much about it.”  
“Can’t you return to your place? Can’t you return being a god of the mountain?”  
She daintily shook her head. “I have given up my godhood, I cannot return. It just happened in unfortunate circumstances – normally another god would simply fill in the emptiness.”  
That sounded like all she had was a long-term solution. Surely, one day another god will inhabit these places, but what about the present? That wasn’t something that could simply be left like that. Sooner or later it would affect the people living here, sooner or later it would spread.  
Like a disease.  
“Is there a way to contain it?”  
“… Perhaps.”  
“Then that’s what we’re going to do.”  
When I declared it, I got on my feet again.  
“Do you have even the faintest idea of where we can find them, Himiko?”  
“We’re going to your shrine now, then we’ll figure it out.”  
“That’s so awfully optimistic, it is almost out of character.”  
It was either that or giving in to pain and despair – I simply couldn’t afford that. But it was true that finding them might not be as easy as I expected. It was creepily quiet, and I mean that I couldn’t hear the noises made by the nocturnal animals, or the rustle of the wind through the branches of trees. No sound hinted at some fighting going on.  
It was as though that place was devoid of life, perfectly still.  
Or, perhaps, it was holding its breath.  
“Let’s go.” 

The god of the mountain just fell weirdly silent and started walking ahead of me. At that point it was more accurate to call her the once-god of the mountain, though. Didn’t she have a more convenient name? She didn’t mention it until that point, and I hadn’t asked yet.  
“Addressing you as god of the mountain is getting tiring. How should I call you?”  
“Oh – well, I haven’t used that name in a long while.”  
Wasn’t she going to say it? She had been speaking quite frankly until that moment, so I didn’t understand why she would suddenly act so secretive and enigmatic.  
I didn’t get to ask more about it, though.  
At first it was almost impossible to discern it, to distinguish it from the actual darkness – but a black wave suddenly rolled down the mountain, running over us. Or, more accurately, running through us. It looked like miasma, and finally I could see how it covered me up to my ankles. And then, a thick fog raised, and after losing sight of my feet first, I became unable to see much further the tip of my nose.  
“What is it?”  
I shouted for no real reason, since the god of the mountain was supposedly a little farther ahead.  
“I am not sure,” yet, when she answered, she was behind me again, making me gasp for the surprise. “But this can’t be a good sign.”  
“Does it have anything to do with that noise earlier?”  
“Perhaps.”  
We resumed our walk made interminable by the unexpected weather conditions. Whatever that shadowy thing was, it wasn’t actively harming us, but surely it was getting in our way. It made our journey way harder, way more unbearable. I gave up trying to figure out how long it was taking, but by the time we arrived at the shrine the few stars we could see amongst the clouds had began to flicker away. I hoped that the odd darkness would disperse on its own with the rise of the sun. 

Nothing changed since the last time I visited that place, except for the fact that I knew the kind of tragedy that unfolded there.  
The ruin, the decay – the abandonment. It was all still there.  
I was expecting the god of the mountain to do something once we got to her home, but all she did was lying on the field still wet from the rain, using a rock as a sort of pillow. I did say we were going to figure it out, but… that sight was a bit disappointing.  
“Won’t you sit?”  
As the shadows seemed to cover her like a blanket, I firmly shook my head. As much as I wished I could drop my body to the ground, as much as I longed for it – I tried to just lean against a tree. I probably already surpassed my very human limits. I felt more like a rock than a person, and being a rock my weight soon got the better of me. My body, from my tiptoes to my waist, faded beneath the miasma. It was my impression it was growing thicker despite dawn drawing near, but my sight became hazier, so – hard to say.  
“So, what are we going to do?”  
The god of the mountain’s voice – was so far.  
Far, far away.  
Muffled, as if I was underwater.  
That was an incredibly familiar feeling, and I realised all I had been doing was running in circles. I returned exactly where I started, hurt again, in pain again. The fact this pain was different, the fact the way I got hurt was different was of little comfort.  
Nor did it console me that I was different.  
How many more times was I going to come back to this place?  
Not like that kind of musing was of any help in that moment, but I couldn’t stop my thoughts from drifting away. I had been told so much that night, but I wasn’t given a moment to feel shocked, confused, or sad. Even then, in that instant of apparent quietude, all I felt was numbness. 

I searched for the god of the mountain with my eyes, but when I blinked she had disappeared from my sight. I blinked again, and she appeared again by my side. Shaking me.  
_You’re hurting me._ I couldn’t say it, but I did think it.  
She started talking really fast, and I couldn’t follow her or understand a single word she said.  
_Please slow down._ “We really, really should go.”  
Why would you say that?  
Where should we even go?  
I somehow hoped, being this whole tale tied to this place, to find those two around here.  
Just one of many miscalculations.  
I had no idea where to go.  
“It’s not safe anymore.”  
That place probably wasn’t safe from the very beginning. Actually, we should have run back the moment the miasma appeared on our path.  
But soon enough I could understand why the shrine was _definitely_ not safe.  
_Something_ rose from the shadows – or should I say, the shadows rose? It didn’t seem to be something detached from it, but rather a whole entity. The end of its four extremities seemed to seethe on the hot surface – but that’s as far as giving it a shape goes. Had it passed by the edges of my field of vision, I probably would have mistaken it for some animal, but as I could stare at it, wide-eyed, I could say it didn’t really look like one.  
I was just trying to rationalise what I was seeing.  
A sight that kicked me back to my pained senses.  
And that much made me realise that the miasma had indeed become thicker.  
It wrapped itself around my body, but it didn’t seem to affect the god of the mountain.  
“I – I am stuck.” The god of the mountain pulled me by my good arm, with little success. I cannot deny I was starting to feel scared. “What kind of oddity is that?!”  
“It’s not quite an oddity yet.”  
This time, she grabbed my other arm, too.  
“Oh no, don’t.”  
“I’m sorry, I have to.”  
The _quasi-oddity_ began to head towards us, and I felt my body being gripped more and more tightly.  
I closed my eyes when she grabbed me again and pulled. I tried my hardest not to wail, both for the pain, and because she failed.  
“What happened to the strength from before?!”  
“I-it’s because of this… thing...”  
Apparently, it got a hold of her, too. I decided not to question its workings, also because I couldn’t really afford to do it.  
Not when a giant, shapeless, but four-legged shadow entity approached us with heavy thuds. Not when that thing loomed over us.  
I gritted my teeth.  
And then, with all the voice I had – I shouted.  
“GODDAMN IT, CAN’T YOU SMELL I NEED YOUR HELP, SUITEN?!”  
I felt extremely mocked when that dumb phrase echoed through the forest.  
“Don’t worry, we can get ourselves out of this situation.”  
“Suit yourself. I need her help.”  
“I doubt she’s going to come just because you yelled to the void.” 

But the god of the mountain – she was wrong.  
She was oh so wrong. 

It flew by with a powerful hiss, and stuck itself right in the heart of the creature.  
_Kokorowatari._  
The long sword pierced through it, from side to side.  
And, noiselessly, the oddity collapsed – into itself.  
Kokorowatari fell to the ground with a loud clank as we got released from the shadows’ grip. 

It didn’t take long for her to make her triumphant entrance from the sky.  
“I got it, didn’t I?”  
Suiten observed her surroundings, barely paying any attention to us. The miasma wasn’t gone, but whatever emerged from it was.  
“You look awful.”  
She finally looked at me. At us.  
_She marched towards us._  
“Get out of the way.”  
Unable to oppose her, the god of the mountain just moved to the side. Then, as though it was nothing, as though it was totally normal, natural –  
After mercilessly ripping apart the sleeve of her attire –  
Suiten detached her own arm.  
And showered me in her own blood.  
“GROSS GROSS THIS IS SO GROSS SO GROSS SO GROSS GROSS GROSS”  
I screamed the whole time. She had already healed me using her blood, but that was on a whole different level. Her blood was quick to evaporate, as if it didn’t exist in the first place. Nonetheless, I soon realised I felt a bit better. That didn’t fix my bones, however. I guess her blood only healed through direct contact?  
“This will do for now.”  
She nonchalantly fixed her arm where it belonged. I watched as I was still somewhat disgusted.  
“How could you throw kokorowatari like that...”  
Soon after, Shishirui-dono arrived too.  
“Kaka, it worked though.” 

Whoa!

Shishirui-dono in his suit of armour was indescribably scary. He really looked like he was ready to go to war. What was the point of that, though? In order to fight monsters, you need to look more fearsome than one of them? Besides, when did he pick it up? Did he leave with that in the first place?  
Suiten was still wearing her robe, but this time her hairdo didn’t make it. Her hair was flowing untamed, and she looked as amused as ever. As if she was having a lot of fun.  
“Why is it that we always have to pick whatever is left of you?” She didn’t say it with a reprimanding tone, but rather matter-of-factly. “I hope you didn’t crawl here because you were defeated.”  
“That’s quite the opposite. I crawled here because I was victorious.”  
That didn’t sound as cool when I said it out loud, yet she looked satisfied.  
“Very well, then.”  
“This is a discussion for later...”  
Shishirui-dono emanated a quite menacing aura. He was pissed off – well, _I pissed him off_ and I couldn’t be more terrified. I was never really scolded by Shishirui-dono, and I didn’t want it to actually happen. I couldn’t even picture it in my head. The thought of him sternly staring at me in silence was enough to make me want to cry.  
So, please, don’t scold me too harshly.  
“It’s your fault for scheming behind our backs. I was sure Himiko was going to do the right thing.”  
It looked like Suiten was already up to date with pretty much everything. I expected her to be a lot more enraged, but either her anger had already been appeased, or perhaps she didn’t care that much about it in the first place. Sometimes her grudges could be short-lived.  
“It seems the two of you can’t understand which is the _best_ thing sometime –“  
Exasperated, Shishirui-dono reminded us of a more pressing problem: _there’s something else we ought to take care of right now._ And he was right.  
“She… the god of the mountain said she knows how to stop this.” Their eyes were suddenly fixated on me, inviting me to continue. Since _she_ suddenly stopped being all chatty (just as expected), I quickly reported what the two of us talked about.  
“It might not be an ideal solution, but it is perhaps the _best_ we have.”  
“So – how does she plan to do it?”  
_She_ – referring to the god of the mountain. In Suiten’s mouth, that _she_ was full of disdain. The two of them hardly ever stopped glaring at one another, but for once I didn’t think Suiten was to blame. The god of the mountain hadn’t been exactly friendly until that moment, meaning she was returning animosity with animosity.  
However, it was time to collaborate. For both of them.  
Understanding that much, the god of the mountain cleared her throat. “This might be where my shrine was built, but this is not the place whence I came.” A place darker, a place deeper in the belly of the mountain – perhaps the same where that oddity soup dripped from. “Of course, it is not a place that can be reached. However, it can be found.”  
“And what will you do once you find it?”  
I thought Shishirui-dono seemed weirdly suspicious, but at the same time he himself believed it would have been a better course of action to eradicate the god. After all, the damage had been done, and she couldn’t gain her previous status again. She was a but an oddity affecting me.  
“Fix its condition, of course. I will need the help of this young god, though...”  
Her smirk was blatantly malicious, and yet the god of the mountain was serious about that proposal. So, despite her not thinking of Suiten as _the original god of the lake_ , she still acknowledged her powers were on par with those of a god?  
“I see.”  
What? How did he agree to it so quickly?  
“Wait, aren’t you asking _how_ she’s going to do it?”  
“Isn’t it obvious, silly?” The god of the mountain spoke before the specialist could, moving in between us, standing before me. “ _We_ are going to do it.”  
“What does this mean?”  
“I cannot do this alone, I’ll need your help.”  
I didn’t like that one bit.  
“I’m not letting you _take over_ again.”  
“I won’t if you don’t want me to. You can be present, it will just feel a little weird.”  
I searched for Suiten’s eyes, hoping to hear her opinion on the matter, but all she said was _I have no idea what she is talking about_. To my surprise, it was Shishirui-dono who answered my silent request for help. Though not the way I expected it.  
“You have no reason to worry. If it were to try anything strange, I won’t hesitate to cut it down.”  
“Mmh – with that sword of yours?” The god of the mountain giggled. “Not that I plan to do anything, but if you were to do that, it could not work. Or, worst case scenario, you’d hurt the girl, too.”  
“That was the reason why I held back, but _worst case scenario_ it might be worth trying.”  
Don’t be so casual about _testing_ things on me.  
“Enough, let’s just do this. I want to return to my shrine before the sun rises.” 

Luckily, Suiten was firm about her priorities. 

The god of the mountain held my hands in her own, and her smirk from before turned into a saccharine smile, her eyes two mere black lines drawn on her white face.  
“Himiko, can you trust me?”  
The answer to that question was not so obvious, or straightforward.  
Although I couldn’t know whether my mother’s stories were true back then, the god of the mountain was, still, the one I always turned to. The one I believed in. The one I entrusted with my fears, my hopes, and my prayers. The god of the mountain was also the one who played a role in my father’s death and the demise of my village. And, in some way, I felt manipulated. The god of the mountain was the one who tried to kill me in a fit of rage, and the one who was trying to help me out, apparently without resorting to deception.  
The god of the mountain – I didn’t know what she had become, exactly.  
How she changed by making me her vessel.  
I – couldn’t tell what were her feelings at all.  
Perhaps she loved my mother, and she clung to me as an act of sick, twisted affection. Perhaps, _because she loved my mother_ , she thought she had some duty to help me out. Or, more likely, it was nothing as complex as that. My mother first, and then me – she chose us because she didn’t want to disappear.  
Because, just like the ghost kid,  
and Suiten, too,  
she felt lonely.  
“I don’t know.” I answered, honestly. “So, show me I can trust you.” 

Her palms caressed mine, until only our fingers touched.  
“You are a lot like your mother.”  
She said it with a melancholic smile.  
And just like that, she disappeared.  
But – 

“Very well then. Shall we get started?” I spoke, but not with my own voice. “I told you it was going to feel a bit weird. But this is what you asked.”  
I was there – but wasn’t.  
I could see and feel but from a distance.  
I could reach for the world and fail to grasp it.  
“My tie to this mountain – these forests, this soil, the animals inhabiting it and the sky above it – has been growing weaker and weaker these past months. I am sorry, but this is the only way for me to establish a stronger connection.”  
_I thought that was why you needed Suiten._  
“No, this is not her territory.”  
“This is actually creepy.”  
That’s what Suiten said, so it must have been so.  
I – the god of the mountain extended her hand to the god of the lake.  
“From my vessel to my old vessel – I wouldn’t be able to communicate with it in that ghostly form of mine. And then we’ll need to join our forces to put a patch on it.”  
_A patch – for the time being._  
“What do you think, Seishirou?” Suiten didn’t get a hold of the god’s hand yet. “Is this a solution you can be satisfied with?”  
“It’s the best we can do for now. However, if this god isn’t going to be replaced, this emptiness will once again be filled with these energies.” Those oddities – that weren’t quite oddities yet. “And if that were to happen, this situation will occur again in the future.”  
But for now we could only take care of the present.  
“I understand.”  
Suiten still didn’t reciprocate the gesture, at which point the god of the mountain decided to give in. 

Instead, she knelt and dug both her hands in the ground. Beneath the miasma, with dirt finding its way under her nails. My nails. Our nails. Suiten finally approached us and sat down before us.  
_What are you going to do?_  
“I’m going home.”  
A soft golden light engulfed us.  
We descended to the depths of the earth – far beyond the reach of the forest’s roots, further, deeper, in the mountain’s hollow ribcage. Where the mountain itself was born – the god’s cradle. The home – the self she abandoned. Each blade of grass, each tree, each stone and each flower, each creature that tread its soil and then died and returned to it – the selves she left behind.  
“You know… this isn’t even my original form.”  
_I guess I could have figured out that much._  
“I’m not even a she.”  
_I guess gender doesn’t really apply to supernatural beings._  
“I just wanted to humour _her_ fantasies.”  
_The memory of my mother isn’t as clear anymore, but I do remember she was quite imaginative._  
“God of the lake.” She suddenly talked to Suiten, and forcefully grabbed her hands. “I’m going.”  
Suiten didn’t seem to understand what was going on, and I didn’t either.  
“I may not be able to reclaim my godhood, but I can still return to the place I belong to. So please, do it properly.”  
Fix it.  
Use me, a once god.  
Enshrine me there.  
Then – we both understood.  
“You can have her as your miko.”  
_What do you mean?_  
_Where are you going?_  
“I am entrusting her to you.” 

“Goodbye, then.” 

Suiten finally grabbed our hands, and the glow became a blinding light.  
And slowly,  
slowly,  
she – no,  
the god was forcibly pulled away from me, back into the ground.   
Back into the heart of the mountain, now so dark, now so cold.  
“You – you cannot leave me.”  
I could hear my own voice, and I saw the god’s face as they sunk into the earth.  
Everything was happening too fast.  
“You cannot leave me...”  
I just repeated it, but it didn’t make a difference.   
Didn’t you say you didn’t want to disappear?   
I could feel my own tears burn in my eyes.  
“You will be fine. You will move on. But please, don’t forget me.”  
_By the way –_  
Their hands reached for my cheeks one last time.  
“My name is Shirayamatsumi.” 

And then, as if buried, Shirayamatsumi disappeared in the depths of the mountain.  
When the first lights cleared the sky – they were gone. 

_You idiot._  
This is not something I can move on from. Something I can outgrow.  
This is something that makes me who I am.  


Unashamedly, I curled on myself and cried my heart out. 


	12. 011

And so – the following day.   
Actually, two days after that, because I slept the whole time. 

What awaited us was a quite messy aftermath.  
Well, the supernatural issue was solved more or less smoothly, but the fact my fight with Shinsho destroyed the entrance to Suiten’s shrine, as well as several other doors, walls, and the likes wasn’t going to get magically fixed. Well, okay, with Suiten’s powers it was going to get magically fixed, kind of – I still got scolded, just a little, before being allowed to rest.  
With Shirayamatsumi I buried my sadness, so I didn’t spill any more tears once we returned. Obviously, I was devastated. Clearly, I felt betrayed after losing something I had found at long last.  
“You asked the god to show you you could trust it – and that’s what it did.” That’s what Shishirui-dono told me right before leaving, and, I guess, I could understand it. “By letting go of you, Shirayamatsumi acted not out of self-preservation, but out of love. Though admittedly there aren’t many who would agree with this interpretation.”  
Oddities don’t love humans.  
But – after all it was as complex as that.  
“You can believe that because Suiten-sama loves you so.”  
At that, Suiten actually kicked me, which made me lose my senses for a long while and forced them to carry me. 

Anyway.

When I finally woke up, neither of them was there. What welcomed me back to the world of the living was Fuyutsuki’s crying face.  
“Hi-chan...” She started bawling like a child, and hugged me a bit too tightly. My arm was wrapped in bandages and I was patched up here and there. “I thought you were dead!”  
“I was just sleeping and you knew it…”  
“It has been three days!!!”  
Yeah… _there there_.  
Only then I realised the ominous presence staring at me from a corner.  
“Ah, if it isn’t Hei-chan.” He didn’t answer me, he just looked really angry. He could be too intense at times. “Don’t tell me you were worried about me, too.”  
“I’m here because I was _ordered_ to keep an eye on you.”  
“I see, I see. If you say it like that, I feel like I’m held as a prisoner.”  
Please allow me to say this, even though I shouldn’t be able to say this in this day and age: what a tsundere. That really was the ultimate essence of his character.  
“So?” Fuyutsuki finally stopped crying, and to my greatest pleasure she let go of me. “What happened?”  
_Now you can tell me, can’t you?_  
“This is going to be a long story –“  
“I have time.”  
So, I told her. About everything. I didn’t leave a single thing out. And by the end of it, she also looked extremely angry as well.  
“Idiot.” Saying that, she started pounding my chest with her fists. “Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot!”  
“This hurts in so many ways…”  
“Ah, I am sorry.”  
She stopped, thankfully.

What followed was mostly small talk. Apparently there was a lot of chatter surrounding the festival after it got abruptly interrupted, but honestly I simply didn’t care about what everyone was saying. It probably was going to be a topic of interest for a while, anyway.  
“Hi-chan… I have to go, but promise me one thing.”  
“What is it?”  
“Next time, you don’t have to do everything by yourself. Please don’t leave me in the dark.”  
“You are right. I am sorry about it, Fuyu-chan.”  
I really was.  
“It must have been scary.”  
“Yes... it really was.”  
Indeed – she was right. It has been scary. No point in pretending to be tough.  
“Then, next time, make sure to reach out.”  
I promised, solemnly.  
“Same goes for you.” 

As soon as Fuyutsuki left to attend to some business, Heiichirou stood and, as per usual, pointed a finger at me. “ _You really are an idiot._ ”  
“I’m not going to fight this argument today – however I thought you somehow imagined what was going on, with the god of the… Shirayamatsumi appearing out of nowhere and all.”  
“I didn’t imagine a single thing.”  
“Uh?”  
“I didn’t see this god.”  
Ha…  
“I _assumed_ something was happening because I knew that sort of thing could occur, but it’s not like I _saw_ it.”  
That possibility… didn’t even cross the back of my mind.  
“But let’s forget about that. How did you think fighting that man alone was a good idea?! There is a limit to what a young girl can do.”  
“You won’t believe the things young girls are capable of.” He was fuming. Quite literally. “I understand Fuyutsuki, but why you care so much?”  
That took him aback, because he finally hesitated.  
Well, I knew the answer, I just wanted to hear it from him.  
Perhaps I have a bit of a sadistic side.  
“It hasn’t been long, however I do think of you as a friend.”  
I really had to hold back my laughter.  
“I see. Then I’m sorry, Heiichirou.”  
He fumbled for something to say for a while, until finally he decided to shut up and sit down again. 

He didn’t get to relax, though, because the door was slid open again, and Shishirui-dono and Suiten finally appeared.  
“Thank you for the help, Hei-chan.”  
Of course, it wasn’t me who spoke -- Have you ever seen a man turn into stone?  
I witnessed such a miracle as those words left Shishirui-dono’s mouth.  
_No one ever called me that? Not even as a kid?_  
I wanted to laugh, but I spat blood instead.  
Apparently my injuries were more serious than I thought.  
“I-it was no problem, brother.”  
He said that while bowing, and then he left without saying a word. Surely he didn’t dare look at me again.  
WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE.  
“Why you look like you’re enjoying yourself, Himiko?”  
When Suiten spoke to me, I immediately got myself together.  
“It’s nothing...” Then, I suddenly remembered. “ _Because you knocked me out_ I was half unconscious when we arrived here – was Shinsho… where I left him?”  
“Oh, no. We didn’t find him.”  
“I see.”  
At that point I was fairly confident that guy was going to outlive us all. But now I could definitely put Shinsho behind me: he didn’t even have a reason to return. In the end, the result he and Shishirui-dono had pushed for somehow fulfilled itself.  
“What you did was not just reckless, it was plainly stupid.” Ah, here it comes… Shishirui-dono’s scolding. “It doesn’t matter whether you had your reasons. Just because you disagree with someone it doesn’t mean you have to engage them in combat.”  
Don’t punches speak louder than words, sometimes? Not that I dared say that, even as a joke.  
“I apologise. I know your efforts were in vain because of my choices.”  
“That’s not the only issue. You could have likely died.”  
Was that Shishirui Seishirou-sama expressing his concern for me? Aww – I felt so warm. I am ready to become a little sister.  
“She’s sparkling. This is clearly not going as intended.”  
Suiten side-glanced me as she clearly _had to_ ruin my moment.  
“I don’t really have anything else to say.”  
“What? I didn’t know you were soft with kids.”  
Suiten was obviously disappointed, but I was honestly relieved.  
“Anyway –“ I spoke before those two could get absorbed in their own banter, excluding me from the conversation just as usual. “I know I am not in the position to do so, but there is something I would like to ask you, Shishirui-dono.”  
“What is it?”  
“If I wanted to become a specialist, would you… teach me?”  
“Absolutely not.” So cold! He didn’t hesitate in the slightest! “First of all, because I think it’s a choice you should reconsider. Your condition is now fixed, you should return to a normal life.”  
“I don’t think… that’s possible...”  
Even if I were to return to this fabled normal life, I couldn’t imagine how I could put this whole story behind me. How was I supposed to ignore the existence of what I saw? And above all, Shirayamatsumi asked me: do not forget me. I wasn’t going to forget, neither the god of the mountain, nor anything else.  
“Recover, for now.” Shishirui-dono let out a long sigh. I thought he would have opposed me more, but perhaps he didn’t think that was a worthy battle. Indeed, it would be a waste of time. “If you haven’t changed your mind, I shall refer you to someone.” 

So, with that promise in mind I healed, and by that time summer was but a brilliant memory. 

The first thing I did, as promised – was cutting my hair.  
Just because Shirayamatsumi left like that it didn’t mean I was going to feel nostalgic. That was, to put it bluntly, creepy, and I simply couldn’t get out of my mind their intent behind this.  
I did it on my own, but I did a fairly nice job, if I say so myself.  
Neat, precise cuts.  
To celebrate that new beginning, I decided to be audacious and trimmed it chin-length. That look surprised everyone, but eventually they got used to it.  
And, as you can imagine, I didn’t change my mind.  
As soon as I was healthy again, I told so to Shishirui-dono. And as soon as I could, I decided it was time for me to leave the village by the lake and the mountain that had become so dear to me. 

Had I known it was the last time I was going to see them – well, it wouldn’t have changed anything. I now have the luxury to ask myself this much, but I couldn’t have known. I couldn’t have imagined. The day I left, I held the belief I was going to see everyone again close to my heart.  
Fuyu-chan, who begged me and begged me not to leave over and over, but who was strong enough to come see me off with a smile on her face.  
Hei-chan, who despite everything tried to force inside my head as much as he knew, and who successfully managed to be grumpy but caring in his own way until the very last day.  
Shishirui-dono, whom I admired, and whose austere kindness I hoped to repay one day. 

And Suiten.  
Suiten, who lamented the fact that no one was going to take care of her shrine from that moment onwards. 

Did she also think we were going to see each other again?  
Surely she couldn’t know, either. 

The last time I saw her – she looked happy.  
“Please let us not start with sappy pleasantries.”  
Indeed, she looked like her usual self as we stood by the fields in the village’s outskirts. The air was already carrying the promise of a cold winter.  
I honestly agreed with her. I didn’t do well with pleasantries, either.  
“Is _thank you_ fine to you?”  
“ _Thank you_ is fine.”  
I have to admit… saying goodbye to her was the hardest.  
“Can I ask you one last thing?”  
“Consider it my farewell gift.”  
“Do you finally feel less lonely?”  
That smile of hers – I wouldn’t be able to forget even if I wanted to. A smile I had never seen her make. A smile that lit up her eyes.  
A smile of happiness.  
The kind you can’t help but smile in return.  
“Of course.”  
“I’m glad to hear that.” 

_It is time to take my leave._ I was relying on the kindness of someone travelling the same way, so I couldn’t let them wait too long.

I was about to go, but turned on my steps.  
Before she could complain, or stop me – I hugged her. I hid my face so that she couldn’t see the tears streaming down my face. Unexpectedly, she returned the embrace and gently patted my head. 

I really wish – I lingered a little longer. 

I released her – too soon. 

“I will see you again.” 

With those words, I bid her farewell.  
With a smile, we told each other goodbye. 


	13. Epilogue

Finally – the epilogue. 

Back to the present. Back to me, and these desolate places. 

Fuyu-chan, Hei-chan. Shishirui-dono, Suiten.  
Everyone.  
Everything.  
It is all gone.  


Of course, the houses are still here. The shrine is still here. But nobody inhabited this village for at least a whole year. Perhaps, more. Perhaps this happened shortly after I left – not like I have a way of finding it out.

I look at what is left and my heart races in my chest. It fills my ears with a grievous heartbeat. 

I – feel guilty for standing here, just like back then. Once again I stand at the end of a trail of solitude and destruction, and that can’t be fair. 

I told this story of mine because I wanted to remember – because it is the only way for me to mourn the precious things I lost. Because I needed to remind myself that despite this sorrow I have to move on. 

I – have to live.  
And so, I shall live. 

On a side note, I did found out something interesting on my way here that somehow hinted at what I was about to witness. I took a different route than the one on which I left, which made me pass by the mountain before reaching the lake. There there were people working, it looked like they were building something.  
And not just anything.  
They were building a shrine.  
I guess Shirayamatsumi was right on the mark – it didn’t take long before they were replaced. It might seem cold of me, but I was relieved: that meant that the disturbance caused by the god of the mountain’s departure was going to be taken care of, properly.  
I couldn’t have known the actual reasons that led these people to seek a new god.  
And honestly, no one would have told me. When I said where I was headed, I was looked at with suspicion and I was suggested to avoid the area altogether. Because that was not a good place – because there bad things had happened.

Even if they told me more, nothing could have prepared me for this. Nothing could have prepared me to losing the place I learnt to call home, again.  
Nobody survived to tell the story – and if someone knew, they wouldn’t dare talk about it. 

I know I ought to get rid of this feeling gnawing at me, and cherish this life of mine that so many helped to save. 

So, I’m going to leave. 

I’m going to leave behind this hollow place. All I need to carry with me are my memories of it. 

My memories of a dazzling, golden summer. 

Thus, this tale of mine comes to an end.  
This story about a girl who encountered god –  
I hope you enjoyed listening to it. 

I hope you will not forget it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly can't quite believe this ride has come to an end.
> 
> My project for Himiko War started by the end of 2016, which right now feels like it was a thousand years ago. I had the idea because I have always been dissatisfied about the fact that what I thought was an extremely interesting part of Kiss-Shot's story was barely mentioned throughout the monogatari series. Not to mention I was sad the little we got to see of Seishirou was short and, quite honestly, disappointing. So I thought, why not? I hadn't written fanfiction in a long while, but I really wanted to do it.
> 
> It was mentioned somewhere in the canon how Kiss-Shot helped avoid a spirit war, and I thought I'd use that as the main selling point.
> 
> Needless to say, Himiko War immediately became something different from what I had in mind, and the "war" was but a plot device working in the background. Like the prop of a stage. The true war that is fought in this story is of a totally different kind.
> 
> I won't hide that there might be a bunch of main and recurring themes in this story, but if I had to say it in a few words, I'd say it is about finding worth in yourself. Although I didn't start writing Himiko with too many ideas set in stone, before I realised it I made her into a character incarnating my own aspirations. Someone capable of coming to terms with her own faults, the mistakes she made; someone capable of accepting others and herself; and ultimately, someone capable of breaking free of her own darkness. Although flawed, hot-headed, and stubborn to a fault, I found myself making Himiko my ideal. Which is why, Himiko War is also a story about myself, if just a little bit.
> 
> And above all, it was a story FOR myself.
> 
> And for anyone who, for a reason of another, couldn't accept themselves.  
> For anyone who struggles to break free of their own darkness.  
> This story is a message to myself, and to you: you can come to terms with yourself. You can accept yourself. Some things you will leave behind, others you will always carry with yourself. But you have the power to find your place in this world -- and feel like you deserve it.
> 
> As such, I'm glad I saw this story until the very end. Despite barely planning it, despite wanting to drop it so many times. It helped my confidence as a writer, and now I know I can actually write a story.
> 
> Thank you for reading Himiko War. When I started posting it I didn’t decide it yet, but I have at last its -monogatari title, so... thank you for reading Shikimonogatari.  
> Special thanks to Staffen for his impressive display of endurance. I have no idea how you put up with proofreading my writing. Give this man a medal of honour.  
> Of course my work on Shikimonogatari is not done. I hope you look forward to the final, edited, and art filled version.
> 
> Until then -- thank you, again.


End file.
